THE MENACE 
OF JAPAN 

FREDERICK. MCCORMICK 





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THE MENACE OF JAPAN 



THE MENACE 
OF JAPAN 



BY 



FREDERICK McCORMICK 



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BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1917 






Copyright, 1917, 
By Frederick McCormick. 

All rights reserved 



Published, March, 1917 
Reprinted, June, 1917 



NorfoooTJ Press 

Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 

Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



FOREWORD 

Many historical facts are common property but owe 
their preservation and value to writers who never re- 
ceived their reward. In living sixteen years with events 
and dates underlying this book, I have lost the respec- 
tive identities of some of their recorders. But I am 
glad that I remember them in their anonymous being, 
with gratitude. 

Many things contained herein, so far as I know, have 
had no other chronicler than I. They cannot be pub- 
licly ascribed to their sources, many of which are official 
and confidential : they touch too closely living issues 
animating and breeding war. Many are simply extracts 
from my own journals and private records. All are 
confidently submitted to the public in the day's work 
in connection with America in the Pacific — " the great- 
est problem in the world." 

In saying farewell to the following pages ere they 
are beyond recall in the printed book, I take pleasure 
in thanking American editors and in particular those 
of Century, Scribner's, Outlook, the New York Times, 
and the Forum, for the intense interest they have taken 



vi FOREWORD 

in the phases of the theme, as I have seen it, that 
"will be finally determined by war", and their courte- 
ous permission to reproduce certain passages herein. 

FREDERICK McCORMICK. 

Santa Monica, 

December 1, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Foreword v 

I "Predatory Packs" 1 

IE War Loans 16 

HI Westward to the Atlantic 39 

IV Rally of Arms 48 

V First Line of Defense 51 

VI Second Line of Defense 88 

VII Third Line of Defense 122 

VLQ Russia and Japan 144 

IX Russia and America 156 

X Political Secrets 172 

XI Japan's First Victory 186 

XH America's Retreat 192 

Xm China's Turn 203 

XIV Getting Rid of the United States . . . 226 

XV Defeat in the Pacific 242 

XVI Recession 270 

XVQ Back to the Ships 291 

XVIII Blows from Japan 310 

XIX Back to the Guns 336 

Index 355 



THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

CHAPTER I 

"Predatory Packs" 

Sufficient time has elapsed since Japan's plans 
for leadership in East Asia and the Pacific were un- 
covered, and enough water has run under the bridge, 
to allow of a glance at the back of the stage, a look 
at the levers and cogs, the cranks, pulleys, rods, and 
wires of the mechanism called the problem of the 
Pacific. 

That problem for America is rising from old battle- 
grounds, and is covered with the debris of our vivid 
and bitterly remembered first conflict with Japan — 
that following Japan's reckoning with Russia. 

Our attempt to set up our rights of the Open Door, 
1908-1910, was of greater consequence in the Pacific 
than Japan's war upon Germany which succeeded it 
there in 1914. In duration its struggle was longer 
than was Russia's pass at arms which preceded it; 
and though confined to diplomacy its revelations and 
consequences make it the most important event to 
us since we hung the ermine curtain of the Portsmouth 
Treaty across the battlefields of two empires and the 
China Sea. For out of that first conflict emerged the 

1 



2 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

trunk and limbs of a second, which in less than three 
years paralyzed the political and diplomatic service 
of the United States in East Asia and showed in its 
lineaments a resemblance which can be likened only 
to that of Mars. 

Owing to the collapse of our Government and polit- 
ical institutions in Pacific affairs, the diplomatic 
post at Tokio which McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, and 
many others found to be the most important to us in 
the world, has been vacant, so far as diplomacy and 
constructive relations are concerned, since 1906. The 
post at Peking, since it was filled by Rockhill, has 
been one of fruitless humiliation and trial to successors 
under the insults applied to us there by nations who 
discount our national policies and resent our diplomatic 
practices, while Congress, sensibly breaking down 
under the Philippines question, in 1915 reached a 
state of collapse, showing we had practically thrown 
up the sponge throughout the Pacific. 

The diplomatic missions to Japan and China there- 
fore became a menace as they were a weakness in our 
Pacific front. The situation of the United States 
in foreign affairs was shameful. The Government, 
in the Pacific, flung away its merchant marine which 
begged among rivals for a buyer, finding a billet at 
last only in the Atlantic by chance through the provi- 
dential ( ! ) existence of a war trade. The wrenching 
and deadening power of that blow, delivered through a 
single shipping bill, — the LaFollette-Furuseth Sea- 
man's Act, — may be understood from this fact : that 
the Pacific Mail Steamship Company which was our 
only America-to-Asia line, first tried to save its world- 
wide organization and trade by transfer to Vancouver, 
— a plan abandoned by the owners through fear that 



"PREDATORY PACKS" 3 

the Government would persecute them afterward 
for seeking protection from a foreign flag, — and then 
in Wall Street hawked its fleet of Pacific liners, which 
in one month in the munitions trade paid for their 
purchase, first for six and one half millions, then six, 
then five and one half, then five and one quarter — 
"and sold." 

The Pacific was not only at a blow cleared of mer- 
chant marine transports and of shipping communi- 
cations with our Pacific outposts and the Asiatic 
seaboard, but the war drained it of war vessels, the 
Panama Canal filled up at Culebra, and we had only 
a mosquito squadron in the Pacific as a military side 
show of the San Diego Exposition. At the instant we 
had to pay four times the normal freight rates to get 
our latest coast defense guns to Honolulu, and had 
no bottoms for munitions beyond Honolulu to supple- 
ment the navy and succor the outlying possessions of 
Guam and the Philippines. 

The administration at Washington was then struck 
by the European war-storm as with its hurricane 
legislation it had come down upon our merchant 
marine. And it is conjuring up but a tame simile 
to say that the American ship of state trembled and 
reeled under its working. 

The Government which was to deal with the greatest 
foreign questions and ulterior dangers in history, or 
perhaps since the ravages of the Mongols, was found 
out to be one of the most provincial we ever had : 
cut to fit its narrow congressional habit of domestic 
politics, whose parish tailors had taken no account of 
necessary international movement and diplomatic ex- 
pansion, to say nothing of the heroic action of govern- 
ment, indispensable to honor and national safety which 



4 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

it never was able to essay. Although the outrages to 
American rights in this crisis were admittedly unpar- 
alleled in all the relations of friendly or hostile nations, 
the Government, like the nation, limped on with its 
domestic squabbles while being periodically stunned 
from the direction of our left flank on the alien Pacific, 
by the mysterious chaos of guerilla revolution in Mexico, 
and seemingly dazed by a hundred incomprehensible 
events hostile to our rights and interests in the Pacific 
area. 

The very first act of the Government in its new 
policy, as I will show, was to erase the Pacific from its 
administrative map. Its attitude toward the world 
without, which like a volcano or a tidal wave was 
ready to envelop all nations with sulphur and suffoca- 
tion, and its concept of national interests beyond the 
three-mile limit, was disclosed. The plans of the 
party leaders of the administration in charge of the 
government, for a four years' program exclusively of 
home issues and home politics, on which to stand or 
fall at the next election, could not be concealed. On 
the contrary it was shortly confirmed by the conduct 
of the affairs of the Atlantic which were of too danger- 
ous a nature to be cleared from the council table, or 
erased from the administration blackboard by figures 
of rhetoric such as I have quoted, and which it was 
found the administration had made no provisions to 
handle. As the sinister cloud of world complications, 
unprepared for, uncomprehended, and unimagined, 
rolled in upon the Capital, the Cabinet began to dis- 
solve. It had not contemplated the world. It had 
not thought of sanguinary things. The Secretaryship 
of State — the office of offices — was abandoned. 
John Bassett Moore, best known in the world of 



"PREDATORY PACKS" 5 

our authorities on international relations, resigned. 
William J. Bryan resigned. After eighteen months, 
Hell had flamed out in the Atlantic, long to dazzle the 
volunteer political firemen of the cabinet-room in the 
AVI lite House, and in the committee-rooms on Capitol 
Hill, to the complete screening away and exclusion of 
the Pacific. 

It requires no imagination to see with what terror 
such a government, under these circumstances, was 
struck at the spectacle of Japan, better armed, again 
abroad on the Pacific warpath. Speaking through the 
State Department it demanded : 

"What would you have us do? Do you want us 
humiliated by what will happen to us if we protest in 
China and the Pacific?" 

Our failure in foreign affairs was complete. Every- 
body seemed to be for himself. Sauve qui pent defined 
our diplomatic situation : the administration for itself ; 
trade, ships, and even national defense, for themselves. 
One of our ablest admirals, Fiske, resigned and then 
the strongest member of the Cabinet, Garrison, the 
Secretary of War, resigned. The American sponge 
seemed to hit the ceiling of the world's international 
habitation when one chamber of Congress passed a bill 
for abandoning the Philippines. The debacle seemed 
ready to complete itself when, fortunately, the ap- 
proach of the presidential campaign, combined with 
the lurid lessons of the World War as exemplified by 
Germany in the Atlantic, and by Japan in East Asia 
and the Pacific, seemed to restore, to the nation a degree 
of sanity that had been absent since 1910. 

The prevailing administration was disillusioned, 
but cowed by the effect of the European War upon the 
Atlantic and Pacific alike, by Japan's rearrangement 



6 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

of East Asia to broader foundations for her Pacific 
policy, and by the shift which she was making. The 
Pacific, dreaded and tabooed in Washington, reached 
the status of the next great world issue. Events there 
that had moved farther since the Portsmouth Treaty 
than for twenty centuries before, made China one of 
the great issues of the World War. She was slated, 
along with the United States, as one of the two greatest 
storehouses of natural resources and treasuries of 
wealth, to pay the war debts of Europe. 

When the pressure for armament and defense 
came, the questions of the Pacific, unobserved, had 
gathered like the wolves of the Russian steppes and 
were licking the heels of truce in the Atlantic. They 
were waiting upon the shores of the whole Pacific for 
their sponsors, the Asiatic and European nations of 
the World War, to follow them, and help them to their 
quarry. 

Now came the presidential campaign. It was a con- 
firmation of the lurking danger of our collective stupe- 
faction and national self-gratification over our place in 
a world of fire and brimstone. And it turned out to be 
a relapse from our belated awakening, and a revelation 
of the state of thought with which we must meet the 
question of the Pacific. Among great issues existing to 
inspire hope and fear for the future of the United States, 
as authoritatively expressed for the people by their 
leaders in carrying on the succession to the presidency, 
those of the Pacific were excluded. From the opening 
of the campaign by Elihu Root early in the year, the 
Pacific, as a prospect before the Great Republic, ever 
turning westward, was ignored as by common consent. 
Limned from the Pacific Slope, where is the acutest and 
most formidable race problem in the world, and where 



"PREDATORY PACKS" 7 

our country on one entire front endures a perpetual 
outlook upon the theater of the future greatest world 
and national affairs, the wide horizon of party discus- 
sion nowhere touched the Pacific Ocean. Though heard 
within sound of its surf, a great address by Charles E. 
Hughes at Los Angeles, August 22, 1916, in opposition 
to the Government, by only two references derogatory 
of China indicated the slightest suspicion of conscious- 
ness among the opponents of the Government, of Asia 
at our door, or of the Pacific eighteen miles away : one 
when he said that after the World War we would have 
no friends among nations save China, and one when, in 
a passing phrase, he reckoned China negligible in the 
scale of large civilized nations. "There will emerge 
from that war," said he, "a new Europe which must be 
met by a new America" — and there stopped. Yet it 
is worth noting that in the Pacific, Mr. Hughes found 
the only friend in all the world which we would have 
after the World War — China. 

Very nearly that time, behind closed doors in Con- 
gress, the senators from the Pacific Coast States were 
urging the necessity of dealing with the Japanese ques- 
tion so as to settle it for all time. A new Europe must 
be met, but it is not more inevitable than a new Asia. 
And our first meeting is with Asia. Any Congress 
which elects to settle the Japanese question is under- 
taking every kind of known and unknown problem of 
empire possible to six thousand miles of American 
frontier on alien peoples and civilizations and hostile 
nations, to say nothing of foreign parts. Though no 
question of our times, in importance, could vie with 
that of the contact of alien races and systems on the 
Pacific Slope and in the whole Pacific area, the osten- 
sible spokesmen of awakened America could not once 



8 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

mention Japan, Asia, or the unmatched Pacific. The 
opponent of the Government also dare not whistle, in 
the Pacific, dogs that sleeplessly rove and scour the 
lands and waters of the Pacific area in the interests of 
Asia and the Allied Powers. 

These lights are not only beacons of current national 
life and sense, in the United States. They define what 
obviously will be the national policy at least until 1921, 
and what will be the thought generally of the people of 
the United States for a considerable time to come; 
when attention shall have to be directed by foreign 
force to the country's international situation in the 
region of its great frontier on an alien and hostile world, 
the Pacific, and at a time when the greatest interna- 
tional and diplomatic questions ever faced must be met 
by the United States. "Predatory nations, like preda- 
tory animals," said Senator Chamberlain, "travel in 
packs." The marine and the submarine motor testify 
that they travel far. They have reached the Pacific, 
in packs, and the same enginery with which they re- 
mold Europe and the Atlantic will be exerted in the 
recasting of East Asia and the Pacific. And it will fol- 
low the work already begun by Japan. The question 
for us is whether the predatory packs of Europe and 
Asia are not already upon our backs. 

Predatory nations reached East Asia a long time 
ago. But they came "traveling in packs" only in 
1900, when Germany reached China to be their leader, 
to "assume command of the punitive and clearing 
operations" of the allied powers. Then the Prussian 
war machine came, with Emperor William's command, 
to make the German name a terror to the Chinese for 
ages to come. China was made the scene of Europe's 
retaliation upon Asia, as Europe had been the scene 



"PREDATORY PACKS" 9 

of the scourging which Asia gave Europe in the Mongol 
overflow. In other words, Europe was to thrust Asia 
in upon itself, throw it back from the West, drive it 
into the eastward sea, over against the Pacific. 

The 1900 pick of the Prussian military machine, — ten 
thousand men, the hurled vengeance of the Kaiser, with 
Marshal Count Von Waldersee at their head, — arrived 
at Tientsin from Europe in September. The interreg- 
num between the raising of the Siege of the Legations, 
August 14, and Von Waldersee's arrival, was described 
by the historians of the great German East Asiatic 
Expedition as one of supreme doubt and chaos among 
the foreign military forces and residents, some of 
whom recommended going into winter quarters behind 
barricades "in the Forbidden City." The modern 
German Army that is mainly fighting the World War 
then had its great opportunity, its first and only mili- 
tary try-out, before beginning the assault on Europe. 

Von Waldersee established headquarters in Peking, 
in the Hsi Yuan or Western Park, in the Empress 
Grand Dowager's "Winter Palace" — the spot where, 
in a subsequent modern building, Yuan Shih-k'ai, the 
President of China, died. Here an agreement was 
drawn up with Li Hung-chang, the refugee Chinese 
Court's vice-regent, that Chihli province lying within 
the Great Wall on the north, the sea on the east, 
Shantung on the south, and Shansi on the west, should 
be given over to the control and policing of the allied 
powers. With their cooperation or acquiescence this 
region was apportioned to the various foreign military 
contingents, "but owing to the withdrawal, in October, 
of most of the Russian forces, half the Japanese, and 
all the American, combined with the decision of the 
British to assume a passive role in the subsequent 



10 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

operations, it fell chiefly to the French and Germans 
to put this arrangement into effect." 

The French in rapid movements relieved four im- 
portant centers in South Chihli where foreigners and 
Christians were besieged and harassed by Boxers. 
Their work was highly important in its pacificatory 
results, the work of the Germans in its destructive 
effects. The appearance of the German forces, clothed 
in bulky gray-brown winter overcoats and seen in 
swiftly moving masses on the plains of Chihli, power- 
fully suggested the roving goat and sheepskin clad 
contingents of Genghis Khan which they were under 
orders to imitate. 

From Peking, Von Waldersee sent an expedition 
northward under Count Yorck, assisted by Italians 
and small detachments of British Indian and Austrian 
troops. Going to Kalgan by the route of the present 
Chinese railway, it returned, bringing the body of 
Count Yorck, who had died at night from charcoal 
fumes emitted by a Chinese coal-ball stove. And in a 
fire which destroyed the "Winter Palace", in which 
Von Waldersee had his headquarters, the latter's Chief 
of Staff, General Schwartzhoff , one of the most promis- 
ing officers of the Prussian Army, lost his life. 

From "the angle of the Great Wall" north of Peking, 
southward, the Prussian punitive army of ten thou- 
sand, in ten principal drives upon Chinese camps, 
cleared Western Chihli of Chinese troops. It had 
made a secondary headquarters at the provincial 
capitol, Paoting-fu, after the withdrawal of the British 
and Italians, and in an agreement divided Western 
and Southern Chihli between themselves and the 
French. It made no distinction between Boxers and 
regular Chinese troops, against whom it executed a 



-PREDATORY PACKS" 11 

uniform plan of campaign to make Germany remem- 
bered with terror, and so inflicted as much loss as 
possible upon all armed men alike. 

The last drive of the great Prussian punitive expedi- 
tion to East Asia was planned in cooperation with the 
French, in the latter 's sphere in Chihli, where the 
French had come in conflict with bodies of Chinese 
troops. And there, thirteen years before Germany 
assaulted Europe, along a spur of the Great Wall, 
was enacted not only a destructive blow against the 
principal defense army of the Chinese throne, about 
forty thousand men under Liu Kuan-ts'ai, but a little 
dash on Paris, that set Frenchmen by the ears. 

April, 1901, while the Congress of Peking sat in 
council on these things and waited, Stephen Pichon, 
later French Minister of Foreign Affairs, etc., etc., 
and much quoted by the world's press, having been a 
journalist, went back up Legation Street to his study, 
wrote out and handed to me a necessary and useful 
authorization to proceed to the French forces under 
General Bailloud, which were cooperating with the 
Germans. 

We had a march of a hundred miles ; transportation 
means were scarce, and I found myself afoot, first with 
the blue, then with the drab. Bailloud took the lower, 
ancient, Peking-Turkestan road, to occupy Kukuan 
Pass, while General Von Ketteler, with the German 
column, turned sharp west to take the nearer five 
small passes. The purpose of the expedition was 
simply to drive the remaining Chinese troops over the 
Chihli boundary into Shansi, with contributory Ger- 
man retribution. 

At Ping-shan Von Ketteler learned that Bailloud 
had already reached Kukuan but that he would not 



n THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

precipitate an attack before the Germans reached the 
passes farther north. But the Germans distrusted 
the French who had previously anticipated Von Wal- 
dersee and the German troops in getting to the pro- 
vincial capital. 

Seeing Von Ketteler was going to do something, and 
not being regularly attached to Bailloud, I joined the 
former. He had almost no transport, his column 
moved at a snail's pace, until close enough to Shansi 
to dash for the refugee Chinese Imperial Court's rear- 
guard forces. 

The German forces split into five separate columns 
and dashed. Clearing the summits of the passes, after 
sharp fighting, the Germans marched over the debris 
of the Chinese defense on to the Shansi tableland. 

At the last moment, in Peking, Pichon had secured 
sanction from Paris for cessation of French initiative 
in hostile action against the Chinese, and General 
Bailloud, on receipt of these orders, sent messengers 
to the Chinese at Kukuan asking them to withdraw. 
The Chinese returned insulting defiances, and the 
French were in a position to advance, when Von Ket- 
teler's left, under Lieutenant-Colonel Von Wallmenich, 
leaving some scores of Chinese dead, its own dead and 
wounded, at Niang-tse-kuan, took Kukuan in the rear, 
and marching through on the other side, to Jukuan, 
Von Wallmenich appeared like an apparition, offering 
his troops to General Bailloud, whom he had not 
allowed time to come up ! Bailloud thanked Von 
Wallmenich with a face which the Chinese said was 
"disgust-black!" It was opera bouffe, but it was 
bouffe in which Paris fell. 

This affair marked the culmination of a heated in- 
ternational military discussion and rivalry during the 



"PREDATORY PACKS" 13 

foreign occupation of North China and military domi- 
nation of East Asia. It was the largest of the punitive 
expeditions in Chihli. The discussion of the relative 
merits of the international troops had as its chief con- 
tention the spirit of aggression, the endurance, and 
the mobility of the German military, which had come 
to East Asia without bringing means to transport itself 
on land. The British military, and the Russian and 
French, were as keen to German audacity and preten- 
sion as if the World War alliance had already been 
made. So were the Japanese. Their own and the 
British troops were as alert to the military points of 
the Russian cavalry as though the Russian-Japanese 
War and the campaign in Mesopotamia were mapped 
out. All the powers of the world were represented at 
Peking in a military conclave that influenced in a 
powerful way the events of the world since then. 
Only the Americans refused to cooperate under Prus- 
sian direction in this scourging of East Asia, and escaped 
the mesh of World War when it came. 

Three years later the journalists and military at- 
taches of 1900 met on the battlefields of Manchuria. 
The lessons of the Russian-Japanese War were dis- 
cussed exclusively with reference to Europe. The 
"next war" was a proximate reality. 

The Austrian was then, on our battlefields in Man- 
churia, called the most highly developed military 
organization in the world. The German was not dis- 
credited, only what respected it "went without say- 
ing." The Bulgars were ranked with the highest. 
Only Turkey was slighted — and merely by silence. 
France was at the pinnacle of efficiency but declining 
numerically. England couldn't gain. 

It was a confirmation of the prophetic gathering of 



14 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

the nations around the Pacific that the fate of Europe 
had its first full military discussion there, and because 
of it, in the war bureaus of Europe and the world. In 
the plain along the Chihli Gulf and the Sea of Japan 
the World War was proximately realized. Those 
countries that were to engage in it had their foremost 
General Staff experts with the Japanese and Russian 
armies. The Russian cavalry was a subject of the 
greatest German- Austrian interest. The ability of the 
Japanese to handle East Asia in future was not a 
keener question than the weight of Russia on the Aus- 
trian-German frontier in the decade to come. 

At that time France had concluded the last details 
of her plan of defense against Germany — down to 
the question of the correspondents, and the press, 
which was to have no existence once war broke, as it 
had not, except as sanctioned by the censor and en- 
dowed with an ex-French life from the English allied 
armies sharing its soil. 

No wonder Germany was so fiercely against Eng- 
land in the World War. France had made all final 
arrangements, as for the execution ground. The 
reason, often voiced, as Ludovic Neaudeau, Redacteur 
du Journal (Paris), told me in Manchuria, 1904, was 
that, so far as France was concerned, there would be 
but "this war." The unerring apprehension of the 
French and their temper was shown by the declaration 
that France must win or die ; she could have no future 
if she lost : France was a country advanced in civiliza- 
tion and opposed by savages. 

Pichon of Peking came later to Paris, and in a letter 
to a London newspaper told the English that the 
World War was "all the outcome of long and pre- 
meditated preparation. . . . The plan that is now 



"PREDATORY PACKS" 15 

being carried out before our eyes was conceived long 
ago ... it was understood we were to be overwhelmed 
under the weight of Germany's land army, equipped 
with artillery against which resistance would be im- 
possible. It was equally arranged that our towns 
and villages should be blackmailed, looted, razed to 
the ground, and their inhabitants treated like noxious 
animals. It was understood that in no war, not even 
the Thirty Years' War, were human laws and con- 
ventions to be so completely set aside." That was 
exactly as in China. And the determining factors 
were drawn from the open military book of East Asia 
— the first time and the first occasion of the opening 
of the book of modern warfare. 

One of the sequels to us of the events of this period 
in East Asia, and of the international affiliations which 
were the result of its affairs, and which directed the 
alliance that not only controlled the development of 
China but resisted the central powers, was that Pichon 
proposed to us an alliance with France and England 
to save free government, and the freedom of the world, 
from destruction. 



CHAPTER II 

War Loans 

I give these reminiscences of the powers of Europe 
as they were manifest in East Asia the first five years 
of the modern military age, to show the importance of 
the affairs on our west to the largest and most powerful 
nations of the world, and those of to-day and to-morrow. 

Frenchmen knew, as early as the first Franco- 
Russian Alliance and when President Loubet went to 
Russia, as attaches who accompanied him have told 
me, the fate held out to them — that when war broke 
out it would bring France's last chance, that she would 
be in the balance with the little countries. And they 
hurried to Manchuria and the Pacific in those years 
of revelation, to decipher the laws of fate. 

East Asia under the code of arms, 1900-1905, fur- 
nished lessons to German military science which gave 
confidence to Germany's rulers and led them to divide 
the world between themselves and their friends. 

The results brought about by the Prussian military 
system, as practiced by the Japanese Army, were 
hardly expressed in the form finally given them by the 
Portsmouth Treaty, when Germany's world politicians 
made a re-allotment of the territories of Europe and 
parts of Asia, Africa, and other regions of the earth. 
To this my German colleagues in Manchuria testified, 

16 



WAR LOANS 17 

on the western shores of the Pacific, and in other parts 
of the world while its battles were being fought, or 
when their lessons were having their effect in Europe. 

There have been numbers of informed Germans who 
have told the naked Prussian truth regarding Prus- 
sian designs upon civilization — Count Reventlow for 
instance, generally gagged in recent years, when crisis 
threatened. He was one of the most fruitful sources 
of the naked truth of which Germans showed them- 
selves fearless, if not reckless. But to make free 
generally with the names of informed Prussian and 
German gentlemen, whose personal situations it is not 
possible to know and judge from the outside, would 
not be discreet or valorous. Those whom I quote 
were highly placed on earth at the time; some have 
gone down, and some have risen since. The years 
since 1905, not to say since August 1, 1914, have made 
a change in their world as well as that of the allies, 
and some of them are among those myriad wraiths 
who float between the worlds and find no rest. One 
now living or dead, who need not be named here, said : 

"To dictate the future of Europe we must reach to 
Paris within thirty days from the moment of crossing 
the French border. This preparation is the difficulty ; 
there will not be a moment's rest for us until the button 
is pressed for war, and the machinery set in motion. 
As we say in Germany : it is not until the button is 
pressed that we can relax. When it is, we can lie 
down and rest. The machinery will run itself once it 
starts." 

There was the lesson of China and Manchuria, 
learned. I believe the same thing could be had from 
Austria, certainly from Russia, who adopted the Prus- 
sian military system which had proved so successful 



18 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

among the Japanese immediately after her war with 
Japan. 

Such international incidents as Captain DuMaurier's 
play, "An Englishman's Home", and the spy scares 
in England and Germany, show how fast "the war" 
was being hurried on after that. In 1905, by winter- 
time, the lessons of Manchuria were pretty well digested 
in Germany. And Germany had but one provision 
unsettled ; it was the question of war correspondents. 
And the lesson of the Russian-Japanese War settled 
that. Germany's war correspondents in Manchuria, 
— all of them army men, naturally, — when consulted 
by the General Staff at Berlin, deprecated war corre- 
spondence in Germany when "the war" came. Thus, 
1905. And the German General Staff followed closely 
the action of the French. Whereupon all was in 
readiness at Berlin, as well as at Paris. No, not all, 
for the preparation and the secrecy had to go on. 
But as much of the all was ready as ever can be got 
ready for any crisis. 

In 1911 I was apprehended at midnight on the Ger- 
man frontier, for an English spy, by an officer who was 
looking for a man with whose description he had been 
furnished, and as I re-entered the railway carriage I 
laughed to myself at the unseemly haste with which 
Germany and the powers were arranging the arbitra- 
ment of Manchuria, for Europe. Germany was getting 
anxious over the general adoption of her military sys- 
tem and the realization that in the Prussianized 
Japanese she would have to fight Asia as well as 
Europe. At that time only Russia was laggard in 
preparation, — due to her war with Japan, — but not 
very much. They all were getting ready for the test. 

Exactly when the open discussion by Germans of 



WAR LOANS 19 

their next dash to Paris began, just what year between 
1870 and 1900, is not an essential fact. But since the 
lesson of Port Arthur it was a perfectly well-known 
"secret" among European military men and political 
students that Paris would not be reached in a month 
if at all by the flank hinged on the Alps, but could be 
reached by battering across the low countries on the 
flank hinging on the sea. The one cardinal principle 
of "the war" was the nonentity of small States. The 
resemblance to the campaign in Manchuria, where 
Japan flanked Russia from the plain hinging on the sea, 
in all the decisive operations, and the nonentity of 
Korea, is striking if only accidental. 

Military and political journalists were very well in- 
formed on the approaching contest. One of the most 
notable open discussions of the Paris feature of "the 
war " is that by Hilaire Belloc, printed in an English 
review in 1912, at least two years in advance, which 
mapped the German route started on by General 
Otto Von Emmich who met his Waterloo at Liege. I 
say Waterloo, because that is what Germans say. 
Liege to Von Emmich and to Prussia, in the light of 
their own original plans, was a Waterloo. Had it 
been a naval operation it would have been called a 
Tsushima. 

When war at last broke, I was sitting in the London 
office of the Associated Press, at 24 Old Jewry, the 
eyes and ears of the world. Soldiers marched up and 
sealed the outgoing cable traffic, standing guard until 
the censors' agents, as had those of Japan in East 
Asia, arrived and screwed up windows and doors and 
especially the mouths, minds, and fingers, of the tele- 
graph service. As during the days and nights of 
watching, the war slowly broke over Europe, along 



20 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

with ennui over British military and journalistic 
watchers, these men, in touch with the powers that 
be, in the actual presence of "the war" that was to 
change Europe as its predecessor had changed East 
Asia and the Pacific, and before it was twenty days 
old, placed the limit of it at not under three, and pos- 
sibly not over twenty, years. It could not be as short 
as Manchuria, and though the military resilience of 
Europe was the greatest in the world, it was believed 
the world could not sustain a great war beyond two 
decades. And the press system worked out in Japan 
for France, Russia, Germany, Great Britain, Austria, 
and Italy, went into effect. 

This was the conspiracy kept dark, which Germany 
was charged with harboring against civilization. It 
had been a long-contemplated, long-planned, long- 
feared, long-thought-out, and long-talked-out man- 
hunt, which on all sides is academically pronounced "an 
economic war", as was that in Manchuria. European 
States had a thousand years to learn to live together, 
and this was the result. They could unite to punish 
East Asia, where they went to learn their final lessons, 
but they could not live together, and they had shown 
that besides sharpening their tools in Chihli and Man- 
churia, they could quit in Europe and the Atlantic 
what they carried to East Asia and the Pacific, when 
they found a third party there to turn upon. 

Europe, old and canny shrew, eats war, lives on it. 
She is so fat with frugality and efficiency, built up with 
her educational and vocational war organizations, that 
she can carry the sword into the ends of the earth, 
as shown in 1900 by the unprecedented China expedi- 
tions, and in 1904 by the ensemble of European arms 
on the Gulf of Chihli and the Japan Sea. 



WAR LOANS 21 

Europe loses nothing of her fighting strength, nor 
her wants. She growls over herself, spending decades 
in making up her mind whether to fight herself or 
others who can pay better. Japan armed and joined 
her as a precaution. She watched the World War 
brawl, trying to pick the winner. When she does, she 
will bring him and his friends to the Pacific. That is 
the policy of prudence and as much safety as is right 
to expect. We are trying to worry the beasts down 
while holding the stakes and making the winnings that 
always accrue to the third party and the outsider. It 
is quite clear what our situation is, and that is why, as 
one man, we rose to arm. We know it is the time to 
consider and prepare against being railroaded into the 
fight for armed truce between the two civilizations in 
the Pacific, such as has been in vogue between them 
in the Levant. It is the after effects, the contributory 
evils of war, that are the most to be feared, the most 
insidious, the least controllable, and against which 
there is no defense but 18-carat readiness. There is 
nothing standing between the plunderable world on 
the one hand and Europe and Japan on the other, 
except ourselves, and whatever happens, the first blow 
we receive will come in our weakest and most plunder- 
able quarter, the Pacific. 

The history of the situation in the Pacific could not 
be brought up to present times from generally known 
facts. The essential facts are the hidden property of 
the foreign bureaus of those powers who pull the strings 
of affairs in East Asia. The identity of those powers is 
obvious to all observers. The considerations on which 
they take the action which causes the periodical alarm 
over the situation in the Pacific and the sacrifice of the 
interests of weak nations or the nations themselves, 



22 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

and the consequent embarrassments to the United 
States, which champions them, are not on the surface. 
I am going to undertake to uncover them. 

What is evident from known history is that the so- 
called great question of the Pacific is that of the ulti- 
mate relation to exist between East Asia, especially 
China and Japan, and the West, especially countries of 
Western civilization in the Pacific. America's effort 
in this direction, inspired by the responsibilities of 
neighborhood and understood from the beginning, as 
seen in the continuous testimony of events, is shown in 
her oft-declared policy. 

American policy in the Pacific can be understood 
from a consideration of American relations with East 
Asia, divided into the following periods : The Canton 
Period, — from the beginning to the date of first treaty 
relations in that region, 1844, — during which the 
United States recognized the absolute sovereignty of 
rule and the integrity of territory of all nations there ; 
second, the Shanghai Period, beginning with the first 
treaty and the opening of treaty ports ; third, the 
Metropolitan Period, representing the arrival of the 
envoys of the powers at the capitals of Japan, of China, 
and finally Korea, 1853 to 1882; fourth, the Man- 
churian Period, beginning 1894 and developing into, 
fifth, the Open Door Decade, beginning 1900. The 
year 1910 saw East Asia falling under the leadership 
and domination of Japan. 

The Open Door Decade had three important events, 
which made it the crucial decade in the determination 
of the question of the ultimate relations between the 
East and the West in the Pacific. The first was the 
Boxer Uprising, the second the Russian-Japanese War, 
and the third the struggle of China to rise and throw 



WAR LOANS 23 

off the aggressions represented in the association of 
foreign allies, which, since the close of the Canton 
Period through the evolution of international contracts 
and special interests, had reached a written under- 
standing to control the fate of China. 

From the close of the Canton Period, the United 
States recognized the territorial integrity of the nations 
of East Asia, as well as sovereignty, together with its 
own responsibility to assist with its good offices the 
nations of East Asia to maintain their independence 
and to raise themselves to the plane of advanced 
nations, reserving only the right of jurisdiction over 
its own people in East Asia. It acted on this recogni- 
tion of responsibility in all ways, so far as it could, 
without the employment of force. 

By its various achievements, the United States had 
established itself in the Pacific. It also had aroused 
the concern of Pacific nations because of the acquisition 
and assertion of rights there based on the claims of 
possessions, and of good neighborhood, affecting all 
the great powers. In fact, these were the terms in 
which was defined a peculiar position of their own, 
which the United States had realized, and in which 
they rendered a peculiar support to the nations of 
East Asia. 

The two great factors of our expansion westward 
have been the Pacific Ocean and the Open Door. The 
Open Door was what our contact with Asia brought us 
to. Under John Hay it was a well-developed doctrine, 
defined and formally established among nations in the 
Pacific in the last years of the Manchurian Decade and 
the first of the Open Door Decade. This book is an 
intensive story of what it led us through, what we have 
done with it, and what it may lead us to do in future. 



24 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

In 1900 the nations of East Asia had so far advanced 
in modern progress, or fallen before it, that China 
alone remained so circumstanced as to be able to profit 
politically by our good offices and aid. Desiring, 
before it was too late, to determine, in the interests of 
mutual welfare in the Pacific, the rights and security 
of China, and the proper lines of relationship of all 
the great powers in the Pacific, as declared by them in 
the past, the United States undertook certain measures 
within its own rights. 

What this was is not all in the category of common 
knowledge. 

The Russian-Japanese War was the great event of the 
Open Door Decade and framed in their present form 
the situations of all the powers, including China, in 
East Asia. The relative importance of the United 
States in East Asia in the outcome of this war was third 
place, next to Japan's ally, Great Britain — American 
financiers having supplied one half of all Japan's war- 
bond revenues, in amount about two hundred million 
dollars. 

In May, 1904, immediately after the first Japanese 
victories, Jacob Schiff, an American banker, arrived in 
London. In view of traditional policy and American 
ideals, Mr. Schiff supported the principle of integrity 
of the Eastern countries, and especially the preserva- 
tion of Japan — the great leader of progress in East 
Asia. He regarded Russia as a great power, but be- 
lieved her to be at the mercy of Japan, provided Japan 
could act quickly and follow up her action, a contin- 
gency to which the lack of money was the only obstacle. 
At the same time, if unsupported, she would soon be 
at the end of her resources, and ultimately, when 
Russia was fully aroused, unless she received financial 



WAR LOANS 25 

assistance, would be defeated. He had satisfied him- 
self and his associates that Japan, though poor, had 
her customs, tobacco, railroads, and other government 
monopolies which were an adequate security for loans, 
and therefore was a proper business risk. 

On May 10, carrying with him the necessary financial 
support from New York, Jacob Schiff entered the bank- 
ing house of Baring Brothers. A remarkable scene 
occurred, the incidents of which I will give as faith- 
fully as I remembered them an hour after they were 
told me by one of the parties present. 

Japan was looking about for money. She had 
sounded British bankers. The world was looking on 
with misgiving as to her possible success. Addressing 
Lord Revelstoke, head of the house, Mr. Schiff stated 
his views on the importance of money to Japan to save 
her from defeat. If defeated, Russia would move into 
Korea and by suitable means make her way into Japan 
and subjugate that nation. Russian success, he said, 
would be a calamity to mankind, and it was the duty 
of civilization to see that Japan received the necessary 
aid. To prevent the colossus from the north reaching 
the Yellow Sea, dominating Japan, and descending 
into China, the two English-speaking countries should 
supply this aid. Lord Revelstoke said : 

"That is very interesting. May I ask you a ques- 
tion?" 

"Certainly." 

"I would like to ask you if you have heard any- 
thing?" 

"Nothing whatever," said Schiff. 

"Well, then, I will tell you. Only this morning a 
loan to Japan of five millions sterling has been signed. 
The Japanese wanted ten millions, but our people were 



26 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

not very anxious, and it had to be arranged at half the 
amount, and that not very willingly. But there was 
some political pressure. You see, Russia is regarded 
as a strong power, and our people hesitate a little." 

To this, Schiff responded with the following : 

"Will you inquire whether the amount can be made 
up to meet the Japanese figures?" 

To this Lord Revelstoke said : 

"Are you interested, and can you secure America's 
support ? " And Schiff replied : 

"You can accept my authorization for the remainder 
of the ten millions for American bankers. I authorize 
you to secure it." 

American finance thereafter shared equally with 
British in Japan's war loans. King Edward sent for 
Schiff and told him that he, the King, was greatly 
gratified at American cooperation, which relieved 
Britain from the embarrassment of being Japan's sole 
financial support in addition to being her ally. " Great 
Britain," said the King, "has intimate relations with 
Russia, along an extensive frontier in the Near East 
and in India, and the Russians would take it amiss to 
find Great Britain aiding Japan single-handed from 
the outset." He thanked Schiff. 

Present-day American finance in East Asia was in- 
itiated by Jacob Schiff in rendering invaluable service 
to Japan. Baron Kaneko stated that this service had 
saved Japan's credit. Other Japanese have similarly 
testified to Japan's appreciation of America's financial 
aid. American finance thus became one of the prin- 
cipal factors in the situation developed in the Open 
Door Decade — a situation in the face of which the 
great powers, and particularly America, are in a state 
of tense pause. 



WAR LOANS 



27 



The importance of this new element in Pacific affairs 
cannot be fully appreciated without a knowledge of all 
the thoughts which it must have awakened among the 
statesmen of the various powers. The appearance of 
American gold as sinews of war on their Pacific frontier 
made a profound impression upon Russians, who at 
once recalled their withdrawal from California, their 
friendship for America during the Civil War, and after- 
ward Russia's transfer of Alaska to us. Looming up 
before her statesmen, greater and greater from that 
hour, has been the specter of American gold and 
American enterprise in East Asia. 

But to none has it been so great a specter as to 
Japan ! l 

Asia and the future of the world, it may be said, 
came to America to sit in council when peace was 
made. That this council involved a change of hemi- 
spheres and marked the first occasion on which Asia 

1 The distribution of Japan's war loans was as follows : 



Ordinance 






Promulgated 






May 10, 1904 . 


£10,000,000 6% Loan 


£5,000,000 London 
£5,000,000 New York 


Nov. 10, 1904 . 


£12,000,000 6% Loan 


£6,000,000 London 
£6,000,000 New York 


March 26, 1905 


£30,000,000 \\% Loan 


£15,000,000 London 
£15,000,000 New York 


July 8, 1905 . 


£30,000,000 \\% Loan 
Post Bellum Loans 


£10,000,000 London 
£10,000,000 New York 
£10,000,000 Germany 


Nov. 25, 1905 . 


£25,000,000 4% Loan 


£6,500,000 London 
£3,250,000 New York 
£3,250,000 Germany 






£12,000,000 Paris 



28 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

has come to the New World to find peace are facts 
which record the direction of the wind of world 
affairs. 

The relative importance of the United States in the 
Pacific and East Asia was shown June 9, 1905, when, 
through its own representatives, the Government 
handed to the governments of Japan and Russia an 
identical note urging the two countries to approach 
each other direct, respecting peace. On August 5, the 
peace envoys, Count Witte of Russia and Baron Ko- 
mura of Japan, met aboard the President's yacht, the 
Mayflower, and with their suites were subsequently 
received by the Governor of the State of New Hamp- 
shire and Federal authorities, and on August 10, nego- 
tiations were opened in the naval stores room at Kittery 
Point, Portsmouth. 

Came about one of the most remarkable gatherings 
of its kind that ever occurred. Having a simple, hard, 
practical duty to perform, and a direct aim, it was 
not as diverse and as all-inclusive as an ecumenical 
conference, but it called men from the ends of the 
earth. 

Each of the two nations involved sent an official of 
its central government, of large political experience at 
home and in the world without ; it was a signal for 
the gathering of the Asian clans. Came the Russians. 
Pokotiloff, the sinologue and political wizard of Cen- 
tral and East Asia, left Peking to travel by the Pacific 
and Canada to New England. Baron Rosen, who 
before the war had been Minister to Japan, left his post 
in Washington to join Witte. From St. Petersburg 
came Korostovetz because of his intimate knowledge of 
the affairs of the Russian Foreign Office and because he 
had been at the birth of Port Arthur and with Admiral 



WAR LOANS 29 

Alexeieff there. Likewise came diplomatic agent De 
Plancon because he had been at the funeral of Port 
Arthur and of the collapsed Russian Eastern Empire. 

Of the Japanese, none were more able than Baron 
Komura, who came with a shadow in the person of 
William Henry Denison, Japan's American adviser. 
Japan's forces were compact. Takahira came from his 
ministerial post in Washington ; Satoh, the publicity 
secretary, and the unofficial Kaneko, — the watchmen 
for the Japanese bankers and economists whom Kat- 
sura said were the Government of Japan, — came from 
Tokio. 

When the two great powers of Asia had gathered 
from the antipodes their envoy-specialists in the di- 
plomacies of several races and civilizations, the press 
assembled its correspondents from the antipodes to be 
the eyes of the world and look on. Came George W. 
Smalley, of the London Times, and Doctor E. J. Dillon, 
of the Morning Telegraph; Francis McCullagh, the 
mediaeval apologist of lost causes, who had ridden with 
the Cossacks in Manchuria, journeying in the shadow 
of Count Witte ; Howard Thompson, who had reported 
the war from St. Petersburg ; George Ernest Morrison 
of Peking, Ishikawa and others at Tokio — all came 
from their European and Asian posts. Other scribes 
from the several capitals of the world and from New 
York and Chicago gathered at Portsmouth, and some 
went to Oyster Bay to be near President Roosevelt. 

The peace problem appeared to be one of money on 
account of the great cry raised in Japan for indemnity 
to pay back Revelstoke, Schiff, et al. Japan's poten- 
tial assets from the war were great. And her repre- 
sentatives claimed her right of the cession to Japan of 
Saghalin, payment of Japan's war expenses, limitation 



30 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

of Russia's naval force in the Pacific, and the posses- 
sion of Russian ships of war interned in neutral ports. 

There were two ways of settling the war : the first 
being that belonging to a power that has been the 
victor and is the master, namely, of reimbursement by 
arbitrary appropriation and the imposition of a treaty 
of indemnity; the second of arranging by diplomatic 
skill, in lieu of compensation that cannot be enforced, 
potential equivalents assuring indirect indemnification 
through future profits and advantages. The latter 
must be the best alternative to a power that, although 
a victor, is not a master. Russia denied that Japan 
had obtained the mastery and declined her demands. 

When this conclusion was reached, negotiations had 
been in progress four days. Six more days passed 
without progress, and the Conference was adjourned 
for two days to communicate with St. Petersburg and 
Tokio. 

President Roosevelt, who later received the Nobel 
Peace Prize for his good offices, was the deus ex machina 
of the Peace Conference. He had received four visits 
from Baron Kaneko, Baron Komura's confidant and 
the personal representative of Marquis Ito, had tried 
in vain to enlist the aid of Great Britain and of France, 
and fearing that the Conference was going to fail, sent 
word to Count Witte that he would like to see some 
one who had his confidence. On August 20, Witte 
sent Rosen, the Russian minister. 

Roosevelt made a strong appeal through Rosen to 
the Russian envoys for some payment to be made to 
Japan. But the belligerents were fairly opposed, and 
he failed on both sides. Roosevelt's efforts caused 
accusations in the press of undue interference and a 
desire on the part of the President to appoint himself 



WAR LOANS 31 

a plenipotentiary to accomplish a peace which others 
had failed to make. 

Half a million Russians were standing at arms in 
Manchuria, awaiting the issue of the indemnity con- 
troversy. Witte and Rosen, instructed from St. 
Petersburg, made the following plans to quit Ports- 
mouth. In case the Japanese should reiterate their 
claims for indemnity when the Conference reassembled, 
Witte was to arise, open the door of the Conference 
room, and say to one of his aides — in Russian — 
"Send for my Russian cigarettes.'' The aide was to 
relay the request to another at Wentworth Hotel, 
Portsmouth, the headquarters of the envoys, where the 
signal, in the form of one cable word, was to start to 
St. Petersburg and Manchuria, to set in motion the 
forces of a still greater battle than that of Mukden. 

It was impossible for negotiations to proceed without 
the interference of parties who had not hitherto ap- 
peared in the pour parlers. Hence the story within a 
story — a second peace council. In the order of their 
appearance, the members of this council were : Baron 
Kaneko, Melville E. Stone, General Manager of the 
Associated Press, Baron von dem Bussche-Hadden- 
hausen, Charge d'Affaires of the German Embassy at 
Washington, and President Roosevelt. Scene : New 
York and Oyster Bay. 

I was in Manchuria on the battle-front at the time ; 
there was no verbatim record made of the conversa- 
tions, but the substance has been given me by parties 
to them, as follows : 

On Sunday, August 27, 1905, Kaneko telephoned 
Stone his desire to see the latter on an important 
matter. Stone left his club, the Lotus, as an undesir- 
able place for a private meeting, and went to Kaneko's 



32 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

lodging in the Leonori Apartment House. Kaneko 
explained that the peace negotiations had been stopped, 
and he was afraid Russia intended to break them off. 
Japan demanded an indemnity which she must have, 
but Count Witte had refused the demand. He there- 
fore wondered whether Russia would not still pay 
under some guise that would satisfy her sense of honor. 

Stone explained his view of the impracticability of 
an indemnity, since Japan was not the master of 
Russia, and Russia's attitude was such that she could 
not be forced. 

Kaneko suggested that Russia might redeem part 
of the railway line, pay for the care of Russian pris- 
oners in Japan, and argued that Count Witte and 
Baron Rosen had it in mind to pay for the redemption 
of Saghalin, which was in Japanese occupation, the 
price of which might be made equal to that she had 
realized by the sale of Alaska to America. 

Stone pointed out that such a transaction, repre- 
senting only seven million two hundred thousand 
dollars in connection with the cost of the war, — half 
a billion dollars, — would appear ridiculously small. 
The proposal would be lost in the laughter of the world. 

The two men sat down to lunch. Kaneko agreed 
that it appeared impossible, but said that even should 
they waive the point, the Conference was in danger of 
being broken up unless something else could be done. 
Stone suggested that, in this case, the thing to do was 
to ask the German Emperor to use his influence with 
the Czar to prevent the Conference being broken up. 

Kaneko was rather flabbergasted and pointed out 
that Emperor William was a yellow perilist, the author 
of a famous cartoon aimed at Japan, and that he could 
not have any natural sympathy for Japan. Stone 



WAR LOANS 33 

replied that, even if the Emperor still held such views, 
they would not be likely to have any consideration 
in the question of peace, which he would be most 
likely m to decide on its merits, influenced by the re- 
sponsibility of his opportunity and the greatness of 
the occasion. 

Means for reaching the German Emperor were then 
discussed, and Mr. Stone was asked to arrange it. 
Telephoning first to the German Embassy at Washing- 
ton, he found that Baron Bussche was at Lenox, and 
got in touch with him a little later by telephone from 
the Lotus Club. Bussche was taken by surprise. 
When asked if he could not come at once to New 
York, bringing his official code book, he inquired if it 
was something important. He got the answer back 
that it was of great importance, or he wouldn't be 
urged, and he started for New York. Stone then called 
Kaneko to the Club, and the two decided that com- 
munication with Emperor William could only be made 
by the President. Stone called Oyster Bay, and 
arranged to see the President. Kaneko affirmed his 
authority for stating that Japan would surrender her 
claims of indemnity, and with this assurance Stone 
left at once. 

At Sagamore Hill, Stone and Roosevelt framed a 
261 -word cablegram to Emperor William under the 
President's signature, with a request to Bussche to 
cable it to the Emperor. The message stated that 
peace could be obtained without Russia paying any 
indemnity, and that she could receive back the north 
half of Saghalin, for which she should pay Japan what- 
ever amount a mixed commission might determine. It 
concluded by asking the Emperor if he could not take 
the initiative in presenting the matter to the Czar, 



34 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

adding, "Your success in the matter will make the 
entire civilized world your debtor." 

Stone reached New York at five p.m., just as Bussche 
was arriving from Lenox, and with Kaneko's consent 
handed Roosevelt's message to Bussche for transmis- 
sion to Berlin. Before allowing it to be sent, however, 
it was decided that the importance of their action was 
such that it ought to have official sanction from Ports- 
mouth. The gentlemen concerned could not under- 
take to act in a matter that would involve the heads 
of three nations, without the knowledge and support 
of the Japanese peace plenipotentiary. In other words, 
they could not send the President's letter to Emperor 
William on the mere word of Kaneko that Japan would 
abandon her claim for indemnity. 

Bussche wisely suggested that he send the Presi- 
dent's letter to the German Foreign office, just as it 
was, but with a full explanation of the circumstances ; 
"and," said Bussche, "perhaps the Emperor will act 
of his own accord." This was done. Late at night, 
Stone telegraphed the Associated Press correspondent 
at Portsmouth, Howard Thompson, to see Baron 
Takahira. The latter swiftly threw a curtain across 
Kaneko's work to screen Japan's position. He stated 
that Kaneko was in no way authorized to speak for 
the commission. 

Monday morning, Stone hastened to see Roosevelt, 
and it was decided to send a long message of explanation 
to Baron Komura, saying that under the circumstances 
as they appeared, he would not send his telegram to 
the German Emperor nor continue to receive com- 
munications from Kaneko unless he was assured of 
Komura's desire that Kaneko should continue his 
communications. The acrimony of this lay in the 



WAR LOANS 35 

fact that it was Kaneko wlio bore the Mikado's request 
to Roosevelt to intervene to stop the war. 

Witte and Rosen received a cable from St. Peters- 
burg to await the disclosure of Japan's purpose, clouded 
by Takahira. Stone learned that his telegram of in- 
quiry had not been "understood" in Portsmouth, and 
revisited Roosevelt, who checkmated Takahira by 
suggesting that the Associated Press make an announce- 
ment that the Japanese had given up their claims for 
indemnity. "Then," said Roosevelt, "let them deny 
it or admit it." 

That day an account at length appeared in the dis- 
patches of the Associated Press, giving Japan's change 
of position. Roosevelt's diplomacy and Bussche's act 
had saved the situation. 

Tuesday, Komura replied to Roosevelt, confirming 
Kaneko's status as a responsible agent. This was the 
day set by Witte for talking cigarettes, and by Russia 
for dissolving the Conference. The Conference met 
in profound secrecy, as before. Sagamore Hill, the 
Lotus Club, the Leonori Apartment House, and Lenox, 
awaited the diplomatic explosion at Kittery Point. 
And Witte, coming from the naval stores room, said 
to his aide and others, "Gentlemen, peace !" 

It had been upon Japan's request that President 
Roosevelt had asked Russia to enter into peace nego- 
tiations with Japan. 

We pause now 7 to think how recently we could ven- 
ture suggestions and good offices to Japan. Up to this 
time we enjoyed the confidence of all. There had 
never been a time wdien combatants and non-com- 
batants alike had not successfully appealed to us. We 
had avoided entanglements, satisfied with being free- 
traders and lending our good offices to contending 



36 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

nations in the working out of the great political move- 
ments of East Asia. This was to be the climax, and it is 
well that it was wildly pacific as well as Asiatic. 

When the Conference opened, Witte presented his 
written proposition which was the Russian ultimatum 
prepared in accordance with instructions from St. 
Petersburg, which gave him the power of breaking off 
negotiations. Satoh, speaking for the Japanese envoys, 
calmly rose and announced that in obedience to in- 
structions, the claim for indemnity was withdrawn; 
that Japan did not wish to be understood as desiring 
to prolong the war merely for money, and that peace 
was possible on the terms of agreement already 
reached. 

Witte could not understand what had struck down 
Japan's clutch at Russia's honor. Those unfamiliar 
with Russian custom gasped in open-eyed wonder 
when Korostovetz, likewise overwhelmed by the seem- 
ingly magical outcome, took Witte in his arms and 
kissed his cheeks. 

"It seems incredible," said Witte; "I do not believe 
any other man in my place would have dared to hope 
for the possibility of peace on the conditions to which 
we have just agreed. . . . Until I was in the Confer- 
ence room, I did not think what would happen. I did 
not anticipate such a great and happy issue. When 
my written proposition was accepted by the Japanese, 
I was amazed." 

Congratulations for President Roosevelt came from 
Emperor William, King Edward VII, Pope Pius IX, 
Takhry Pasha, Regent of Egypt, the foreign ambas- 
sadors and ministers at Washington, Count Cassini, 
General Booth, the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, the 
Mayor of Southampton, The Trades Unions Congress 



WAR LOANS 37 

of Great Britain, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, 
and many others. 

When the diplomatic explosion at Kittery Point for 
which he was listening took place, President Roose- 
velt said to his secretary, Loeb : " Whistle softly ; we 
are getting into thin timber, but we are not yet out of the 
woods." And the praise that his success then inspired 
appeared extravagant. The Pope, when informed of 
peace, rose and exclaimed: "This is the happiest 
news of my life ! Thank God for President Roosevelt's 
courage." After this remarkable exclamation, he tele- 
graphed congratulations to the Czar and to all the 
world. The general world-chorus of approval numbered 
among its voices not only kings, statesmen, ecclesias- 
tics, and workers, but great warriors like Field Marshal 
Lord Roberts, and writers like George Meredith who 
said : "President Roosevelt will be crowned in history 
as the champion wrestler for peace." And he was. 

No mention was made of the American-German 
Peace Council in New York. Stone suppressed a press 
telegram from Portsmouth, giving Takahira's denial of 
the published news that Japan had abandoned her 
claims for indemnity, thus shielding Takahira. The 
Associated Press, when it printed its acknowledgments 
to its correspondents who had aided in making the 
Peace Conference successful, mentioned its resident 
agents at Washington and New York, two men on 
special assignment at Portsmouth and Oyster Bay, 
and its telegraph operator. It was ten years before 
the facts, patent to us, were publicly known through a 
condensed article published by Stone in the Saturday 
Evening Post. 

Kaneko admirably effaced himself, disclaiming all 
credit or place in the result, modestly retiring and leav- 



38 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

ing the field to the accredited officials. He was present 
at a luncheon given by the President, September 12, 
showing that he was exonerated from any suspicions 
in connection with the act that achieved Japan's 
peace. Komura, according to official announcement, 
fell ill, and returned to Tokio under a cloud of popular 
disapproval, and afterward appeared as the genius and 
the director of Japan's whole enginery of state. 

Komura 's apparent diplomatic defeat at Portsmouth 
was reflected in the policy which he then forged for his 
country, and in this his proper star arose. As that 
policy has been not only acutely opposed to American 
policy and interests in East Asia, but is contrary to 
Japan's previous declarations, by being coordinate with 
Russian policy there, Americans may see in it the im- 
mediate fruit of their mediation in 1905, when Russia 
was persuaded, by a strange combination of circum- 
stances, to make peace. The world ever since has 
wondered why Russia did it. 

I have given the extra, or ancillary secrets of the 
Russo-Japanese Peace Conference. The story has 
been explained in words by Mr. Satoh, and in writing 
by Professor Amano, ex-President Roosevelt, Melville 
E. Stone, Captain Brinkley, and others. But no 
written accounts of the peace negotiations which re- 
sulted in the Portsmouth treaty mention the essential 
facts, namely, those that account for the subsequent 
history of the two nations of Russia and Japan in 
East Asia, and the limiting of American influences and 
interests, in which we started upon the payment of an 
incalculable price for the peace prize which Roosevelt 
had won. 



CHAPTER III 

Westward to the Atlantic 

Japan's entire world had changed. She left Ports- 
mouth with a new earthly position, though nobody 
knew definitely what it was, and the only persons who 
might suspect were the Russians. 

It was left to us to uncover. On August 10, 1905, 
Edward H. Harriman, who was associated with Jacob 
Schiff, and personally had taken five million dollars of 
Japan's war bonds, started for Tokio. He set out for 
Japan's capital on the occasion of the closing act of 
the war, just as the peace commissioners were meeting, 
and as Schiff had started to London when Japan won 
the first land battle. 

August 31, 1905, Harriman landed at Yokohama and 
proceeded by train to Tokio. In the first days of 
September, he visited Marquis Ito, chief elder states- 
man and principal adviser to His Majesty the Em- 
peror of Japan. September 5, the Peace was signed 
at Portsmouth while Harriman was being received in 
audience by the Emperor of Japan and banqueted in 
Tokio by Baron Sone, Minister of State for Finance. 
And within Hve days there was signed a memorandum 
agreement for American lease and operation, with 
American capital, by Mr. Harriman, of the Russian 
Railway in Southern Manchuria and its resources, 

39 



40 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

acquired by Japan as a result of the war, which after- 
ward became the South Manchurian Railway. 

In the light of Japan's hostility to America, first in 
regard to Manchuria, and now respecting all China, 
it can hardly be believed that this took place : yet it 
is a fact. Harriman's errand was masked by a set of 
providential circumstances. While Schiff was loaning 
money to Japan, and Roosevelt was turning bayonets 
into pruning-hooks and swords into ploughshares, 
Taft, then Secretary of War, was being snubbed at 
Canton by a bumptious Chinese small official, and the 
President's daughter, Miss Alice Roosevelt, afterward 
Mrs. Nicholas Long worth, was in the interior of China 
having daily adventures for the edification, through 
the press, of men and nations. Finance and diplo- 
macy could desire no more in the way of public diver- 
sion, behind which to shield their operations. 

This remarkable agreement, called the Ito-Harriman 
Memorandum, lay unnoticed by all writers on the 
subject of the Portsmouth Treaty and its history in 
Manchuria, and of American policy in East Asia. It 
was a tentative contract, which recognized as feasible, 
and provided for the transfer of Manchurian railways 
on lease to a neutral holder. Harriman left Japan for 
Manchuria and China to examine into the value of the 
railways in question and the possible attitude of China 
toward the question of their transfer to him. 

The conditions under which the agreement was 
realized may be understood from a consideration of 
the excitement caused in Japan by a publication of the 
terms of the Portsmouth Treaty. Riots occurred, de- 
struction of property, incendiary resolutions on the 
peace terms and denunciation of the Treaty, and finally 
the incidental mobbing of Harriman's party when en 



WESTWARD TO THE ATLANTIC 41 

route to and from the house of Baron Sone, Minister 
of Finance. Harriman's party, on its return from the 
house of Baron Sone, watched the movements of the 
mob from the roof of the Imperial Hotel. 

Everything connected with the Treaty enjoyed 
national condemnation. And although the mob never 
heard of the Ito-Harriman Memorandum, the Govern- 
ment at Tokio came to consider the plan premature, 
and chose to forget it. The Government at Washing- 
ton still maintains the agreement confidential, while 
Japan has the most eminent reasons for keeping its 
existence unknown. In Japan nothing of it ever has 
been committed to the public. Its publication must 
affect the memory and fame of Ito, a great idol in 
Japan, and, in the light of Japan's subsequent policy, 
it must stand as a blot on the record of the Govern- 
ment and the Foreign Office, at least until a newer 
generation. 

The obvious reasons of Japanese for continuing the 
secrecy of the Ito-Harriman agreement relate to Japan's 
original attitude towards Manchuria, and the treaty 
rights of other nations there as interpreted by Ito. 
Besides affecting the memory and fame of Ito, and 
exposing the nature of the counsel upon which the 
Government, if not the Emperor, acted, all of which 
was opposed to the subsequent expansion into Man- 
churia, Japan, since showing herself able to dictate 
Russia's policy in Manchuria, would not care to have 
it seen that in 1905 she sought to bring America 
between herself and Russia, by turning over the rail- 
way to her. This was a measure which, to Ito and his 
party, was an economical and political necessity. 

In the minds of these men, Japan, after the war, 
would require a decade or more to recuperate and to 



42 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

safeguard Korea in her development, during which 
time Japan must secure the effective neutrality of 
Southern Manchuria. For some time a tacit admis- 
sion by Japan of such weakness in reserve assets as to 
make it impossible for her to retain what she had gained 
in Manchuria, making it necessary to negotiate the 
railway or abandon it, in its effect on Russia must be 
an important consideration. Russia would ask if it 
were possible that for ten or twenty millions of dollars, 
— the sum Japan afterward allotted for reconstructing 
the railway, — she would have fallen back to the 
Korean boundary after peace ? Why, this was hardly 
more than Russia was losing annually on her North 
Manchurian Railway. 

According to Japanese standards set up by Komura, 
Marquis Ito, Marquis Katsura, and Count Inouye, the 
signatories to the agreement, were traitors to national 
interests. In the agreement, Japan, by farming out 
and turning over the only negotiable asset of the war, 
the railway taken from Russia, gave up the nation's 
political vantage upon which was to rest its subsequent 
expansion, and which is a large part of the foreign 
policy of greater Japan. Toward the middle of Octo- 
ber, Komura arrived in Japan, threatened with violence 
by the people on account of the peace terms which he 
had signed. In the opinion of his countrymen, he had 
signed away the right to a great indemnity to cover 
the cost of the war, and had left them with a burden 
of debt which they could not bear. What happened 
to him, including the threats of assassination, might 
well have happened to Ito, Katsura, and Inouye. 

Komura thought that the temper of the people 
toward himself and the peace treaty showed that the 
Ito-Harriman agreement must be buried, a conclusion 



WESTWARD TO THE ATLANTIC 43 

quickly reached by the men in Japan foremost in the 
Government : Katsura, Sone, Inouye, Soyeda, Taka- 
hashi, Goto, and others — and Ito followed. Komura 
said that if it were attempted to carry out the agree- 
ment, there would be a revolution. Thus the measure 
was lost. And President Roosevelt admitted that it 
had been premature. Harriman himself expressed 
that idea in a later visit to Japan, and so did SchifF, 
who had actively defended and promoted American 
enterprise inaugurated in East Asia by these events. 

When Japan contemplates how, perhaps mistakenly, 
she might have exchanged this present " Greater Japan" 
for the alternative comprehended in the plan of Ito 
and the War Cabinet, she must wonder what Russia 
thinks, and perhaps what we think? 

Immediately on his return to Tokio, Komura, with 
Marquis Katsura, framed a state policy with reference 
to all Manchuria, China, and the powers, depending 
on the abandonment of the Ito-Harriman agreement, 
and the conclusions that had permitted it, on a principle 
contained in the secret minutes of Russian and Japan- 
ese negotiations at Portsmouth, and secret undertakings 
between Russia and China, which our Government at 
Washington knew nothing about. The abandonment 
of the plan of Ito and the ideas of the Japanese Govern- 
ment of that time, and the relegation of the Ito-Harri- 
man agreement, was accomplished with most dramatic 
silence and dispatch. The Government turned "right- 
about" with accurate military precision and took up 
the plan of state devised by Komura. How the United 
States tripped and fell into the net of these complica- 
tions through its lack of knowledge, failure to prepare 
the ground, and ignorance of diplomatic history, will 
be described. 



44 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

A through, international route in Manchuria, created 
with our aid and cooperation, would have satisfied 
Japan's aspirations. But on second thought, after 
Komura's return, she wanted all of whatever she 
touched. Harriman, coming back from Japan, realized 
the possibilities of her extension of that touch, and 
said we would have war with Japan in ten years — 
Japan's development would bring it about. 

The world was also changed for us. But all that 
we knew we blundered into. Harriman had acted 
privately, wholly on his own initiative. He had come 
into control of the New York Central and the Union 
Pacific railways. With them and the Pacific Mail 
Steamship Line, because it was a big liability and had 
no prospects otherwise, he conceived the project of a 
belt line of the world. His plan was to sail the Pacific 
Mail steamers into Dalny (Tairen) and with the rail 
connections afterward known as The South Man- 
churian Railway connect with the Russian Chinese 
Eastern Railway. Had he succeeded in Japan and 
China, he would have proceeded to St. Petersburg to 
secure connections by the Russian Imperial railways to 
Libau, where an American steamship line would have 
completed the circuit of the globe. 

Great credit was given to Harriman in Wall Street 
for what was considered a brilliant exploit in extracting 
the Ito-Harriman Memorandum agreement from Japan. 
Six years afterward Otto H. Kahn said : "A high per- 
sonage [Honorable Lloyd C. Griscom, our Ambassador ?] 
temporarily residing in Japan during the year 1905 
told me that the most amazing thing he had ever 
witnessed was the way in which Mr. Harriman in the 
course of a ten-days' visit to Tokio made a whirlwind 
campaign among the leading men and succeeded in 



WESTWARD TO THE ATLANTIC 45 

carrying away from the wily, wary, slow-moving 
Orientals a most important contract, so important 
and so far-reaching that, had it been carried out (and 
it was no fault of Mr. Harriman's that it was not), 
the course of Far Eastern diplomacy in recent years 
would have been different in some essential aspects." * 
But why did Japan enter into this contract with 
Harriman? The facts are that at the time, as was 
shown by her disappointment at Portsmouth, she was 
looking for just such an angel as Harriman. Like the 
poor peasants of Russia she was looking for "a rich 
American uncle." Marquis Ito, in making peace, had 
decided that if an indemnity could not be secured 
from Russia, expansion was impossible. If an indem- 
nity could be had, Japan could hold all interest domi- 
nated by her armies and dominate Korea and Man- 
churia up to the Russian-Japanese line of division on 
the railway at Chiang-chun (Kuanchengtzu). With 
the elimination of one item after another in the indem- 
nity calculations, as presented by Japan at Portsmouth, 
the Government at Tokio arrived at a position where 
the appearance of American finance was a deliverance. 
By the offer of Edward H. Harriman to lease and 
finance it, the Government thought it had been en- 
abled to save the railway taken from Russia, to turn 
it into a barrier against the Russian frontier, and to 
exploit the hinterland. In considering Harriman's pro- 
posal, Ito had before him the fact that Russia was los- 
ing (silver) ten million dollars yearly on the Chinese 
Eastern Railway in her sphere in Manchuria. Harri- 
man's main point was that he could operate the railway 
at a profit and give a generous royalty to Japan. He 

1 Edward H. Harriman. An address delivered before the Finance 
Forum in New York on January 25, 1911. By Otto EL Kahn. 



46 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

had the means for doing this. With regard to Korea, 
Ito remembered Japan's irksome burden in Formosa, 
where it had been necessary to train Japanese officials 
out of raw material before the island could be adminis- 
tered. Respecting Korea, Japan had no administra- 
tive officials with which to begin her administration 
there, and none speaking the language. Korea alone, 
to Ito, represented a task almost too great for the 
nation. Also he was solemnly impressed by the na- 
tion's responsibilities to the Koreans and especially by 
the difficulties that would arise with foreign powers 
in Korea. 

The Ito-Harriman agreement therefore represented 
to Ito and his associates an important, safe, and ade- 
quate step forward, the wisdom of which remains to 
be disproved. Had Japan carried it out, not only 
would the subsequent course of diplomacy in East Asia 
and the Pacific have been different, but it might have 
been the greatest possible measure, in its consequences, 
for future prosperity, civilization, and peace in the 
Pacific area. As a result, American capital would 
have been immediately drawn to Korea, Manchuria, 
and North China, more railways would have been 
built and industries opened, and Japan would have 
secured our cooperation in all legitimate Pacific and 
Asiatic affairs. Japan would have been a beneficiary 
beyond calculation by a combination that would have 
secured through peaceful commerce what she is en- 
deavoring to secure through armament and threat. 
The two nations facing each other across the Pacific 
doubtless would now be working together for the up- 
building of the Pacific instead of preparing for war. 

America will have occasion through the decades to 
remember that Ito was its friend, that he remembered 



WESTWARD TO THE ATLANTIC 47 

with gratitude the aid which Schiff and Harriman 
rendered to Japan in a vital hour, that he appreciated 
their desire to continue it, and that we were trusted by 
him. 

Japan's distrust of the United States began with 
Komura. Whether Komura resented the acts of 
Stone, Roosevelt, and Bussche, because of the situation 
produced at Portsmouth, or the acts of Ito and his 
associates in contracting through Harriman for Japan- 
ese-American cooperation on the continent in Man- 
churia, it is certain that Komura was the first Asiatic 
of power in the Pacific to distrust the motives of 
Americans and of American policy there. The turn 
of the Asiatic took place in Tokio when Komura 
reached there from Portsmouth, October, 1905 ; and 
there came the parting of the ways recognized by 
Harriman on the Pacific Ocean, before he set foot 
again upon American soil. 



CHAPTER IV 

Rally of Arms 

Komtjra in two months had cut the ground com- 
pletely from under not only the Ito-Harriman plan 
but all American enterprise, including long-established 
trade, all of which had been guaranteed at Portsmouth 
in Article VI of the Peace Treaty, which read : "Japan 
and Russia reciprocally engage not to obstruct any 
general measures common to all countries which China 
may take for the development of commerce and in- 
dustry of Manchuria." His work in this was consum- 
mated by signing with China at Peking, December 
22, 1905, an agreement whose terms, by the interpre- 
tation which Japan placed upon them, gave her dom- 
inant powers and special privileges in Manchuria, 
cancelling the Open Door provisions signed at Ports- 
mouth. Having done this, Komura placed in China's 
mouth the statement that China could not consider 
the proposals of the Ito-Harriman agreement by 
which American capital was to be brought into the 
railway in Manchuria, which words he sent by cable 
to Tokio, there to be communicated to Harriman. 

It was nearly three years before China was in pos- 
session of the latter information and able to deny this 
to the Government at Washington, but the circum- 
stance was of no consequence to the fate of the 

48 



RALLY OF ARMS 49 

Japanese-American agreement. Komura had a knowl- 
edge of the strength of Japan's position through the 
secret information of the Portsmouth Conference 
which convinced the statesmen at Tokio that in Japan's 
future on the continent she must not be embarrassed 
by American scruples of Chinese integrity and sov- 
ereignty, equal rights and the Open Door, which would 
be involved in American cooperation. As she was 
allied with England, which guaranteed her from 
British interference, she got from London the money 
she first intended to secure from New York, to finance 
her Manchurian Railway, and bought in America 
with appreciable economy her railway equipment. 
And it appeared, though it could not be asserted, that 
she thus sought to salve over American reproach and 
avert suspicion by a sop to that gratitude which Ito 
felt to Schiff and Harriman. 

Komura went so fast and so far in his continen- 
tal, or "Greater Japan", policy that Russia, as well 
as China, was alarmed. Russia saw in the haste of 
Japan rocks ahead, when the world should find out the 
origin of that haste, and the very next summer sounded 
Wall Street for a buyer for her interests in Manchuria ; 
she wanted to get out. 

It took us years to get our bearings, thanks to the 
tangle in the skein of race relations across the Pacific 
which our Government never tried to unravel. Tokio 
had treated us to a sample of Japanese liking for the 
United States in respect to the Portsmouth Treaty, 
and California returned the doubtful compliment by 
a demonstration against Japanese. In 1900, when 
Russia was looking for an escape from Manchuria, 
this issue had its origin in the "school question" — 
a controversy over Japanese students of various ages 



50 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

in the ungraded schools in California. Although a 
recrudescence of the same opposition that was visited 
against the Chinese in the past, it was, more than any- 
thing else, an indication of the swift development of 
the Pacific. Japan had just emerged successful from 
her first great war, and the moment was one that our 
Government regarded with awe. 

The phenomena arising from the working out of 
Japan's secret plan of empire, as it affected Manchuria, 
very well defined by this time, had aroused enduring 
distrust, and Japan was somewhat annoyed by having 
to make explanations to our Government as to the 
meaning of her acts. She therefore very properly took 
advantage of the school question, when it flared out, to 
create a diversion at Washington. 

Our Government did not understand the Man- 
churian situation. There apparently was no American 
official, either in the State Department or in East Asia, 
who did. But all outward evidences showed that 
Japan was forcing a most aggressive expansion, mainly 
political, into Manchuria and Mongolia. In the 
California question we were helplessly wrong, but as 
there was no solution that would agree with the strict 
letter of the treaty between Japan and America, with- 
out coercion of California by the other States, retali- 
ation upon Japan for her insistence was made neces- 
sary. President Roosevelt sent Secretary of War 
Taft to the Pacific to emphasize the firm adherence of 
America to the Open Door policy, against which 
Japan's plans of unknown consequence, but immediate 
injury and danger, were clearly opposed. October 8, 
1907, in a speech at Shanghai, Taft declared as fol- 
lows : 

"The policy of the Government of the United 



RALLY OF ARMS 51 

States has been authoritatively stated to be that of 
seeking the permanent safety and peace of China, the 
preservation of Chinese territorial and administrative 
entity, the protection of all rights guaranteed by her 
to friendly powers by treaty and international law, and, 
as a safeguard for the world, the principle of equal and 
impartial trade with all parts of the Chinese Empire." 
Thanks again to our diplomacy, the "safeguard for 
the world" depended on things our Government knew 
nothing about. It was somewhat out of its element, 
in a region where nations were throwing away their 
pledges, especially after leaving a treaty with Japan 
violated behind her. Japan had put into Manchuria 
the younger and aggressive members of her consular 
and commercial service, and the older and conserva- 
tive element of her military service. She desired a 
maximum of aggression and a minimum of danger. 
America then imitated Japan in respect to consular 
service, but unintentionally. We had neither the 
knowledge nor the diplomacy to organize a plan of 
action. So far was the Government at Washington 
removed from having any aims of that kind in Man- 
churia that Mr. Fred Fisher, the first American Con- 
sul at Harbin, raised the whole international question 
of the violation of the Open Door in Manchuria, in 
Europe, Asia, and America, before he had been pro- 
vided with any instructions whatsoever as to the 
course he should pursue there. It was a fair example 
of our neglect of diplomatic matters, which are the 
matters of details, and though despised on this ac- 
count by our people and Government, as shown by our 
violation of the American-Japanese Treaty in Cali- 
fornia, and other foreign treaties, are nevertheless the 
whole thing in international relations. 



52 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Now China's real interests prompted a natural and 
truthful expression of her attitude toward the United 
States. Komura was not long out of China when the 
latter looked about for the wherewithal to execute 
means to safeguard and develop her Manchurian prop- 
erty. She approached America, because that was the 
only capitalistic and friendly power whose assistance 
would be disinterested, and whose motives would be 
without suspicion and above reproach. The next aid 
sought was that of British skill, because as the ally of 
Japan, British motives would be above cavil. As a 
reply to Komura's cablegram to Tokio respecting 
China's attitude toward American capital in Man- 
churia, it may be mentioned that in August, 1907, China 
entered into an arrangement through the American 
Consul General at Mukden for capitalizing a Man- 
churian bank with American money, — afterwards 
fixed at a minimum amount of three hundred million 
dollars, — to finance measures of commercial and in- 
dustrial development, including a trunk railway from 
the Gulf of Chihli to the Nonni and Amur rivers. 

The American Government was as far removed 
from connection with these efforts of China as it had 
been with the Ito-Harriman project. In the absence 
of any interest or attention within the State Depart- 
ment during this period, the young American consuls 
in Manchuria, after the success of Fisher at Harbin in 
provoking our Government's interference against 
Russia's violation of the Open Door, developed a 
counter policy of their own toward Japan's aggres- 
sion, which showed a determination to outstrip that of 
Russia, who was now piqued into resistance, which 
gave support to Japan's campaign. And this action 
was so far out of scale in the State Department's con- 



RALLY OF ARMS 53 

ception of the case, that it called down the criticism of 
American Minister Rockhill at Peking, and a conse- 
quent reprimand by the State Department. The 
unauthorized and independent opposition of the young 
consuls, and their accompanying propaganda, which 
resulted in strengthening Chinese counteraction against 
Japan, aroused Japan more than anything that America 
had done in East Asia. And then began the real Amer- 
ican-Japanese conflict of ill feeling and sensation. 

In 1906 came the Japanese school question in Cali- 
fornia — and the first war scare. It was a question of 
the treaty rights of the Japanese, in America, partly 
economic, partly racial. It was the real Asiatic 
Problem — the problem of the like and the unlike, 
for which, if there were any solution, there would be 
much less written about it. Although the issue 
started in the simple question of school privileges, all 
Japan and all Western civilization realized that it 
was the Asiatic Question. 

We were still under the disability of a lack of under- 
standing and of plans, May 5, 1908, when we signed 
with Japan an arbitration treaty. It was remarked 
in Washington that all questions there found their 
end in that of Manchuria. The school and treaty 
question had not progressed any, and Japan took 
advantage of the situation to distract attention from 
Manchuria by continuing her diversion at Washing- 
ton. Roosevelt took the defensive, and retaliated by 
sending a fleet of sixteen battleships into the Pacific. 
Japan backed a little ; she removed the pressure of 
the school question by recalling her ambassador, Aoki. 
The fleet sailed through the Straits of Magellan to 
California. When it had visited the British Aus- 
tralasian colonies, and had provoked demonstrations 



54 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

expressive of a strong feeling in the Pacific against 
Japanese expansion in Western lands, it visited Japan 
and China. Not to offend Japan, Roosevelt avoided 
sending the fleet into the Gulf of Chihli, the zone of 
the Manchurian allies, Japan and Russia, Britain and 
France, as China desired and had arranged. In fact, 
by the time the battleship fleet had reached Australia, 
the moral effect of the measure had been all that the 
Government contemplated, and any further action 
calling attention to the Manchurian situation was 
avoided. Secretary of State Root was obliged to take 
up the Harbin, or railway zone administration ques- 
tion, concerning the Open Door, because Fisher had 
made it acute, but he could not get to the bottom of it 
and never uncovered the basis of Russia's position, so 
well known to Japan. Roosevelt, advised by Root, 
then inaugurated the opening of the Isthmus of Pan- 
ama, the most important and impressive act of state 
and diplomacy in all American relations with the 
Pacific and East Asia. It embraced a possible whole- 
sale relief from the pressure of the Asiatic question, 
by letting Europe at Japan from the quarter where, 
by defense of her flank, the Isthmus, according to 
Humboldt, had protected her in her seclusion since 
America was discovered. 

But otherwise, barring the battleship fleet, with 
respect to East Asia and the Open Door, Roosevelt's 
administration drifted, relying upon its great Canal 
measure of cutting the flank defense of Japan, the 
Isthmus of Panama, to possibly checkmate that rising 
and troublesome conqueror. After John Hay, nothing 
had been done in East Asia to extend, or even to fortify, 
the Open Door policy. 

Then, in 1909, President Taft came into office. 



RALLY OF ARMS 55 

Komura now loomed immense on the western horizon. 
The situation respecting American interests in East 
Asia was acute. The opportunities were very great 
for effecting lasting good. The commercial treaties 
had not been carried out, and we seemed the natural 
leader in any international action because we were the 
only power China did not distrust and the only one 
she regarded as a friend. The doctrine of fair play 
and equal right in East Asia, which, as time had gone 
on, were strengthened in this country by the utter- 
ances of successive American statesmen and officials 
until they had conquered the minds of the statesmen of 
Europe, was at stake. President Taft instructed his 
Secretary of State, Knox, to give special attention to 
East Asia. He was the only President who had been 
to that region, where he had been Governor-General 
of the Philippines. He had a special knowledge of 
and a special interest in it. In the light of Japan's 
treaty pledges and protestations, the situation of 
China and of American interests, Taft enlisted some 
of the foremost financiers to aid in preserving the 
traditional national policy, and the securing of the 
markets of East Asia open to American trade and 
enterprise, and undertook to give friendly aid and 
encouragement to China. 

These questions will be finally determined by war, 
and they need to be explicitly expressed. Taft's 
course was the natural and proper result of our past 
integrity in East Asia, giving us a position there and 
in the Pacific, from which it was hoped we could never 
be dislodged. With Taft's instructions before it, the 
State Department entered upon a course which ul- 
timately furnished a revelation of the underground 
workings of Japan, in connection with Russia, that 



56 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

caused Taft to remark on the neglect in the State 
Department in the past. Japan's acts, notably in 
bringing the zone of the Mukden-Antung Railway, — 
a military line built during the late war, — into the 
field of her special and exclusive rights, her civil inva- 
sion of Manchuria in the Chientao region on the 
Tumen River, Russia's acts in exercising civil govern- 
ment over Harbin and the zone of the Russian railways 
in Manchuria, etc., showed that a great conspiracy 
against China and the Open Door existed. In the 
dark regarding the most important facts of Japan's 
and Russia's position in Manchuria, the State Depart- 
ment, with plans devised to annul the known and 
unknown foreign influences that were undermining 
the Open Door doctrines, entered upon a voyage of 
discovery. 



CHAPTER V 

First Line of Defense 

These matters of the relations and affairs of the 
United States with other nations exactly correspond 
to the relations which individual Americans have 
with each other. Their importance to the nation is 
exactly the importance of the things which make up 
the intercourse and affairs of individuals. This is a 
fact which has to be henceforth learned in the terri- 
tory and expanse between the Atlantic and Pacific 
oceans, which never had to be learned hitherto. 

In 1905 the Open Door in China was a principle 
accepted and kept by all the powers, and strengthened 
by the terms agreed to by Russia and Japan in the 
Portsmouth Treaty. But after three years of Japan's 
silent but forcible undermining in Manchuria, and 
onslaught upon our established doctrine, the powers 
began to show signs of falling away. And while we 
were still occupied in Manchuria, Japan's allies struck 
us on our flank in Central China. It was necessary for 
us to do something. 

Japan's sheet anchor, through the results of her 
war, as I will show, was Russia. This made the war 
the dividing line in the Pacific history of all Western 
powers. It forced them to shift their positions, and 
it aligned them against themselves. 

57 



58 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Japan therefore had other allies, however unavowed. 
It was clearly seen that a new basis for foreign influence 
and power in China was created. After about seventy 
years of vicarious free-trade intercourse with China 
and East Asia, we saw that we were being displaced. 
We saw that the United States must readjust itself to 
conditions. Our industries and capital shared this 
attitude with our Government. The material and 
moral advantages coming to us as a compensation for 
our participation, along with our associates, in the 
preparation of the field of commerce and relations in 
China, must be safeguarded. In order to do this, we 
must actually get into China with a nationally pro- 
tected trade, prepared to take the physical as well as 
merely moral responsibilities of our position there and 
among the great powers. Laying down and picking 
up commodities at the seaboard was not enough. We 
therefore undertook to establish our trade and rela- 
tions on a permanent basis. 

China was the scene of a high state of competition 
among nations. When these nations had first come 
into open competition, commercially and politically, 
in order to prevent collision, Great Britain, France, 
Germany, Japan, and Russia created for themselves 
"spheres of influence." This recognition of common 
interests and the necessity of peace to insure their 
prosperity made, in a certain sense, "allies" of these 
powers, and common interests led to their cooperation 
in the affairs of China. 

At a favorable moment of good understanding came 
America with the principle of the "Open Door", or 
equal opportunity for trade. Set up among the 
powers, chiefly through the exertions of John Hay, 
this principle, together with the revolutionary effects 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 59 

of the Russian-Japanese War, seemed for the time to 
have demolished the doctrine of "spheres of influence" 
which had threatened partition of China. 

It was inevitable that competition should reach a 
more and more acute stage, notwithstanding the ag- 
gravations due to the political effects of the Russian- 
Japanese War. But suddenly, in 1908, its effect be- 
gan to oppress American interests. The "Open Door" 
seemed dissolving into a figure of speech, largely due to 
the increasing control of trade by the three mentioned 
European capitalist powers through loans to China, 
which for five years had been syndicated and nearly 
monopolized by them, and by the Japanese (Russian) 
revival of "spheres of influence" and "special rights" 
in Manchuria. Recognizing this, our Government 
took steps to wrest from European finance equality 
for America as a money lender, merchant, and useful 
friend to China, in keeping with the integrity of her 
long partnership with that ancient nation. 

In 1909 came the crisis. After having granted to 
Germany, Great Britain, and France, in the German 
and British "spheres", a loan contract to build one of 
her longest railways, — the Tientsin-Pukow line, — 
China further responded to overtures from these 
powers for the construction of the greatest railway 
system yet devised by her — that of the southern and 
western connections for her chief industrial center, 
Hankow. 

The success of these negotiations as planned would 
have given the three European capitalist powers, whose 
policy was directed to offsetting Japan's aggressions 
in the North, another far-reaching monopoly. But 
more : the European powers and Japan had learned, 
and were more than ever convinced by Japan's Man- 



60 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

churian expansion, that the control of industrial de- 
velopment gave the monopoly of trade, and while 
negotiating with China, they were arranging in Europe, 
under the style of the British, French, and German 
groups, a syndicate to control all China loans, present 
and future, the most promising means of limiting 
Japanese and Russian aggressions on the north. 

The monopoly of loans, industrial development, 
and trade in China, would mean not only exclusion of 
American commerce, but the limitation of the influ- 
ences of American ideals and institutions, and would 
determine the political future of East Asia on Eu- 
ropeanized lines, giving America both an unknown 
Asia and an unknown Europe on her west. It was 
seen that America must enter into China's finance and 
development abreast of the foremost powers, or lose 
not only her commercial and her political position, 
but possibly her moral and cultural position, in the 
rise of East Asia and the Pacific. 

A problem was presented as to the best means of 
entering this situation, which could not be effectively 
dealt with on rights assured to us by treaty. What 
was needed was a basis of physical interests. Having 
no concrete physical interests involved, our Govern- 
ment took stock of its diplomatic assets. Americans 
were among the first railway concessionaries in China 
and held a legacy from the unwisely abandoned Han- 
kow-Canton Railway concession. And August 15, 
1903, in consideration of the same concession being 
given up, China granted the right of American partic- 
ipation in the building of a projected railway from 
Hankow toward Szechuan — the Hankow-Szechuan 
Line. 

Such agreements are common in China, and may 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 61 

be called premier-right-of-aid agreements. The tri- 
partite drama of the Hankow loans was well on before 
America realized the whole value of this as a weapon. 

An impasse was reached which exposed this por- 
tentous antagonism that existed between Germany, 
on the one hand, and Great Britain, together with her 
commercial ally, France, on the other. For three 
years Germany, seeking future advantages, had worked 
on the lines of a liberal and progressive policy with 
China. She had recently favored China in the Tien- 
tsin-Pukow Railway loan, in the German sphere of 
Shantung, where she had the balance of power, forcing 
the British and French in that contract into easy and 
profitable terms for China. Great Britain and France, 
with their vast interests already established, and 
regarding those terms as dangerous, and having the 
whip hand by reason of a right-of-aid agreement, were 
determined to use it. 

Britain, with her constitutional perversity in situ- 
ations of gravest consequence, proceeded to reestablish 
previous loan conditions, refusing to China the terms 
granted in the Tientsin-Pukow loan, substituting 
terms of an earlier loan contract which was one of the 
most humiliating and exasperating that, on her part, 
China had to perform. Germany remained passive, as 
a silent partner, and saw China refuse the British pro- 
posals. But when Britain became inexorable, a new 
situation was created. Germany's opportunity pre- 
sented itself, there was a flash of the political sword, 
and a crisis came in the annals of China's finance. 

The British in China felt justified in pressing their 
position, from a conviction that they could control 
China's credit and finance, through a financial pool 
in Europe which they thought had been consum- 



62 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

mated. On March 2, 1909, a meeting of the British, 
French, and German groups took place in London, 
which drafted an agreement to this end. It fixed 
terms and conditions to be imposed upon China, and 
not only controlled China's credit and finance, but 
had in view forestalling America's entry into China, 
threatenings of which already had been heard in 
January. It was known that America was standing 
in the wings with her right-of-aid agreement, and 
otherwise might at any time step under the proscenium. 
We thus felt the steel of Europe in the Pacific. 

At the outset, China had appointed her leading 
statesman, Chang Chih-tung, to conduct her negoti- 
ations. He had long been Viceroy at Wuchang, op- 
posite Hankow; he knew the Germans well, and es- 
pecially the Peking agent of the German bank, Herr 
Cordes. March 6 or 7 was set for signing this agree- 
ment. Pending signature, the Germans gave notice 
that they held themselves free to act, and in the 
interval they seized the Hankow-Canton loan for 
themselves. First securing a definite refusal from the 
British, Chang Chih-tung asked the German group 
bank to present a tender for the loan, and finding it 
in accordance with the most favorable terms hitherto, as 
was all previously arranged, he accepted it, and at 
once exchanged pledges with Cordes. 

Germany, who was fighting England in all her 
spheres, had been watching this loan with the four 
eyes of the dual-headed German eagle. Britain was 
done out of the benefits and value of her premier-aid 
agreement, which was one of the defenses of her su- 
premacy in the Yangtse Valley, and upon which, 
largely, she had been able to pool the European banks. 

When it is remembered that Peking in these days 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE G3 

was considered to have reached a position of impor- 
tance in diplomacy and intrigue not inferior to that 
of Constantinople itself, it may be seen what a furore 
was created. From being chiefly the theater of con- 
flict between personal idiosyncrasies, whose greatest 
international affairs were social animosities and petty 
scandals, Peking had been taken by welt politik. Ger- 
many, who was to mortally assail her and all her ilk, 
"had penetrated the Yangtse Valley", "the sacred 
sphere of Great Britain." 

Whispered at the club and in drawing-rooms, this 
challenge electrified the foreign community and as- 
tonished the chancelleries of a dozen legations like the 
tocsin of war, while it sent a thrill to the capitals of 
Europe and America. 

Up to this moment, little more than a commercial 
interest in railway loans in China had existed among 
the powers. But now, an outside power had chal- 
lenged British rights and supremacy in her own tra- 
ditional sphere, and that power was her bete noir — 
aggressive, audacious, and irrepressible Germany. 

The event came at the time the German War scare 
was raging in Great Britain. There were several naval 
scandals, that spread throughout the British Empire 
a feeling of suspicion of British naval management 
and efficiency; German "spies" were being dis- 
covered in many English by-ways ; invading German 
aircraft were apprehended and visualized ; there was 
a "Greater Britain" army agitation, and the creation 
of the "boy scouts." A patriotic play by an army 
officer, founded on the invasion of Britain by Germany 
and called "An Englishman's Home", had taken the 
populace by storm, and even had been performed in 
Germany, to show to what length a British war scare 



64 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

could go. Altogether the exploit of the Germans, 
coming at this time, to the British was in the nature of 
a submarine attack or a Zeppelin raid. 

We then had been eleven years a territorial power in 
Asia, and our own advent had been challenged by at least 
one of these powers in Manila Bay. The sound of this 
challenge had not died away when the German Em- 
peror's sentence of terror to China reverberated in the 
East, and it was loud in our ears when the challenge 
of Germany to England sounded along our Pacific 
frontiers. And the echo of it was still heard when 
Japan and England by arms took possession of Kiao- 
chou Bay and the German concessions at Tsingtao 
and in the hinterland. It is a part of the sequence of 
these events in China that it was mainly Japan that 
took Kiaochou, and the German "sphere" which, to- 
gether, were the base for promoting these enterprises 
under discussion ; and one may wonder what the Ger- 
mans now think of these exploits which already fore- 
shadowed the interference of Japan in all rights in 
China, however securely established in history and 
practice, and defended by time, precedent, and material 
interest. 

The importance of Germany's exploit was no less 
significant to America. It reacted by preparing the 
way for American enterprise to expand in China, and 
set in motion a train of events far more ominous to us 
in the Pacific than were these events to Germany. We 
had seen by the general grab of the European powers, 
in their movement to out-expand Japan, that it was 
time to do something if anything could be done — both 
for the Open Door and for ourselves. How to make 
them disgorge was our problem. 

We see daily what Europe is on the east of us, and 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 65 

now we can see its potentialities and promises on the 
west, from what the most recent past has to show. The 
occupations of the powers engaged in the World War, 
immediately preceding its outbreak in Europe, were 
concerned with the Pacific. 

The door was flung wide open for America's invasion 
of the whole Chinese financial field. But this was 
due as much to the means which Great Britain em- 
ployed to recover her position, as to Germany's exploit. 

How to recover place in the lost Hankow-Canton 
loan was the first problem of the discomfited Britons. 
They tried to overawe China by representing that 
British rights had been overridden. Patriotic Britons 
accepted the situation as a discreditable scandal. 
They admitted having been outmanoeuvred, and began 
efforts to recuperate from their losses. They failed 
in their efforts to discredit the German agreement with 
China, and instead of gaining credit with China by 
claims of acting in her financial interests, both Britain 
and France were charged by her with conspiracy to 
injure her borrowing power. 

Fortunately for them, they possessed a right-of-aid 
agreement, similar to that possessed by Americans, 
which entitled them to half the benefits of foreign 
participation in the Hankow-Szechuan Railway. By 
the use of this agreement, they were able to at once 
bring forward negotiations with China for the con- 
struction of this line. In the circumstances, it was 
like a last chance, and Great Britain played her hand 
with rather reckless indifference. Conveniently as- 
suming that Americans had withdrawn from Chinese 
loans, they naively tendered the American interest in 
the Hankow-Szechuan line to the Germans, as a peace 
offering, in exchange for equality in the lost Hankow- 



66 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Canton loan. America, in the past, had been indiffer- 
ent to Chinese loan affairs, but Britain's action con- 
vinced her more than ever that she was irrevocably 
involved in the intimate affairs of China. The act 
amazed the Americans by its audacity, while it amused 
by its desperation. But before America could realize 
that the British and French, in their contest with 
China's credit, had capitulated, Germany took the 
bait, and before the Washington Government could 
act, Britain and France had confiscated America's 
half interest in the Hankow-Szechuan Railway, and 
had achieved the delicate task of reuniting the three 
European groups. 

These powers had again started confidently on in 
their tripartite financial career, and were bringing 
negotiations rapidly to a conclusion for loans for the 
two railways mentioned, under the name of the 
"Hukuang loan", when they saw looming before them 
the amazed, outraged, "impossible, but unavoidable" 
Americans. They had hardly finished their own 
acrimonies and reunited their ranks, when they turned 
a bold and defiant front to repel American invasion. 

America never had been so important in the prac- 
tical and vital affairs of East Asia. The denouement 
of this situation was the diplomatic event of 1909- 
1910. Aside from the heads of the British and French 
foreign offices, Sir Edward Grey and M. Pichon, and 
the German Chancellor, Doctor Von Bethmann- 
Hollweg, — the World War leader of foreign politics 
in Germany, — the personnel engaged included the 
principals in Peking : Sir John Jordan, the British 
Minister, an experienced and able diplomat, and 
seasoned "China hand"; Mr. Hillier, the blind and 
astute British banker; assisted by the Frenchman, 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE G7 

M. Casenave, holding a hard-won diplomatic rank of 
Minister Plenipotentiary ; and Herr Cordes, of the 
German Far Eastern Chancellery, a good fighter, and 
the sole survivor of the incident of the murder of Von 
Ketteler, which precipitated the Siege of the Legations. 

To oppose this formidable confederation was a single 
official in the American Legation. Mr. Rockhill, the 
Minister, who had seen the contentions initiated, had 
withdrawn from China in June, leaving the Legation 
to the first Secretary, Henry P. Fletcher, a former 
Rough Rider, and a Pennsylvanian, upon whom fell 
the pioneer work in China of bearding the European 
diplomatic lions. Back of him stood Secretary of 
State Knox, together with the late J. Pierpont Morgan, 
Jacob Schiff, and other Wall Street capitalists, like the 
vague figures of British, French, and German finance, 
hovering gloomily in the background. But above all 
was President Taf t, the first national executive who had 
come into personal contact with the life of East Asia, 
and whose special knowledge gave him a personal as 
well as an official interest in the contest. 

When Germany closed with the British offer of our 
share of, and the European groups appropriated, the 
"Hukuang loan", America's rights became effective 
in four foreign capitals. The efforts which America 
now put forth to break this four-sided European com- 
pact into which China was led, and preserve American 
rights in China, while aimed at all participants, were 
addressed to China for the fulfillment of her agreement. 
Secretary Knox expressed the Government's views in 
a forcible statement which he issued, anticipating a 
fuller participation in foreign enterprises in China than 
America's solitary right-of-aid agreement would have 
admitted her to, if carried out in the ordinary course. 



68 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

He thus took full advantage of the circumstance that 
the European groups, by their act, had opened the 
door by which American finance was to be admitted 
to equality in all enterprises in which rights were re- 
served to foreigners in China. 

Now came America's note, framed by the Division 
of Far Eastern Affairs, of which William Phillips was 
chief, under Huntington Wilson, First Assistant Sec- 
retary of State, forwarded by Secretary Knox, and 
requiring of China the fulfillment of her promise 
through participation in the present loan, in accord- 
ance with America's right to be consulted in case 
foreign aid should be required for the Hankow-Szechuan 
Railway. 

In East Asia the "situation" is everything, and 
here was a new one created amid renewed conster- 
nation. China, with some alarm, communicated the 
note to the interested powers and took a renewed ac- 
counting of her situation. Chang Chih-tung, her 
leading statesman, who had been Viceroy at Wuchang, 
opposite Hankow, when the right-of-aid agreement 
was given to Americans, was severely censured for 
having overlooked it at the vital moment. He had 
forgotten it. But as he was the greatest man in 
China, and spoke with authority and resource, he 
was, in fact, the whole Chinese position. He shared 
in the pride which the European bankers took in 
having brought the loans virtually to a state of com- 
pletion. And to him was due the Chinese official at- 
titude of incredulity on the entire subject of America 
in the loan field in China. He got his view from the 
Europeans, who did not believe that America would 
fight the battles of commerce in China with the weapons 
they themselves had to use. 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 69 

In justice to them, it must be said there was noth- 
ing to show the contrary. American initiative had 
become so supine in China that none could believe the 
United States Government capable of such energy. 
In the ranks of the European groups, America was 
charged with perfidy in thus coming into the arena. 
It was said she had once declined, which had some 
basis of fact. Two years before, British bankers had 
approached American financiers, notably the National 
City Bank and First National Bank, both of New 
York, regarding American participation in the rail- 
way for which America had the right-of-aid, and had 
received a negative answer. Although other American 
financiers made overtures to the British and French 
financiers, both in January and in April, 1909, for 
cooperation in loans in China, the European financiers, 
for their purposes, at any rate, chose to regard that 
reply as final. This view, which was now maintained 
by the British, was shared by the French and accepted 
by the Germans. 

The Europeans, however, admitted the actual situ- 
ation. Their first move was an endeavor to persuade 
the Americans to withdraw their representation lodged 
in Peking, failing which an agreement could not be 
reached with America. They attempted to belittle 
the financial power of the American group, organized 
to defend, financially, American right of equality in 
China, the abilities of which, they said, were untried 
and unknown, and the members of which had been 
hurriedly assembled for the occasion. They meant 
that America could not loan money at the low rate of 
interest prevailing in China, and would therefore be 
dependent upon Europe after all. 

These efforts availed the Europeans little, even in 



70 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

the gaining of time, and only invigorated American 
action. America's note had reached China in the nick 
of time. The Tientsin-Pukow loan agreement was 
signed January 13, 1908. The Germans, under the 
noses of the British, had secured the Hankow-Canton 
Railway loan agreement March 14, 1909 ; the re- 
vised loan, under the style "Hukuang Loan", initialed 
by the reunited European group representatives, was 
signed June 6, and June 9 the United States Govern- 
ment announced that it had conveyed to Great Britain, 
France, and Germany the intention of American finan- 
ciers to participate in the Hukuang Loan. 

Present-day diplomacy has been flattered as the 
instigator of the World War that was to follow these 
events, and what now happened is a good illustra- 
tion of its processes. The Europeans were very in- 
teresting and specious in their arguments. They 
deprecated a division of foreign opinion and policy 
toward China, and said that pressure by America 
upon China, if successful, would have an injurious 
moral effect alike on all relations with her, as it 
would show her that she could annul agreements with 
foreign powers. Although we made good use of 
some of these arguments ourselves, afterward, Amer- 
ica refused to take an equivocal course. Our Govern- 
ment held China to her pledge, refusing to allow 
the European powers to come between. Fearing 
a slackening of China's resistance to Europe, Mr. 
Fletcher, in Peking, kept up a constant siege of her 
high officials. Seeing that America would not recog- 
nize the European groups, to the ignoring of China, 
in effecting a settlement, the European governments 
did not think it necessary to restrain their financiers. 
On June 12, in consequence, American representations 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 71 

to China had become almost a protest. The European 
groups were employing every persuasion to induce the 
immediate ratification of the loan by China. Before 
June 14, the German bank received instructions from 
Berlin that the Chinese negotiators be urged to me- 
morialize the Manchu Throne to ratify the loan as it 
stood. 

There had never been a situation in Peking like this, 
and it had elements of great gravity. Fortunately, 
America's concern began to impress the Chinese, and 
Liang Tun-yen, active head of the Chinese Foreign 
Office, though not himself convinced of America's de- 
termination, consulted the European banks as to what 
they were willing to do. Naturally, they all stood 
together and urged ratification. Thereupon China, 
feeling herself to be in a hard position, and convinced 
by America's opponents, considered ratifying the loan 
before America could make good her demands, hoping 
thus to forestall further complications. 

Seeing that China was thus allowing herself to be 
dragged about, America called upon her to make good 
her promises, on the one hand, or to repudiate them 
and override American rights, on the other, and by 
her action demonstrate the true value of her right-of- 
aid agreement of August 15, 1903, of her confirmation 
of the same, July 18, 1904, and of her repeated decla- 
rations of friendliness for the American Government. 

There was no imitation by Americans of the policy 
and tactics of the Europeans. In stating its position, 
the United States Government avoided all appearance 
of pressure. It stated to China that America would 
not attempt to coerce her, that she would be left en- 
tirely free. But it emphasized that whatever China 
did must be done in public view. 



72 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

American representations to China had never been 
so strong. Liang Tun-yen, the Minister to whom they 
were addressed, asked what China should do. 

"Tell the European bankers that you cannot ratify 
the loan," was the answer of the American Charge 
d'Affaires. 

"But they insist upon our keeping our contract; 
they will bring pressure to bear upon us." 

"Stand behind the United States," replied the 
Charge, "and oppose their actions as being any prec- 
edent for yours and ours. But do not send in the 
memorial ; do not issue the edict." 

The Minister then stated in so many words, "We 
will not send in the memorial." 

"Very well; if you will not issue the memorial or 
the edict, the loan is stopped. That is all that is 
necessary." 

No doubt China welcomed this pressure. The 
Chinese Foreign Office thereupon formally notified 
the European groups, through their banks in Peking, 
that China was not willing to ratify the proposed loan 
in the face of American representations. 

America's first position was won. On January 6, 
1910, in explanation of its course, the State Depart- 
ment said : "Late in May last this Government learned 
that an understanding had been reached between 
important British, French, and German financial 
groups supported by their governments by which they 
were to furnish funds for the construction of two 
great railways in China. This Government, believing 
that sympathetic cooperation between the governments 
most vitally interested would best subserve the policies 
of maintenance of Chinese political integrity and 
equality of commercial opportunity, suggested that 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 73 

American cooperation with the group already formed 
would be useful to further the policies to which all were 
alike pledged, etc." 

This letter contains no less than ten references to 
the "Open Door", again securely linking that prin- 
ciple to all American effort and policy in China. The 
Government at Washington had often interfered in 
Chinese foreign affairs on behalf of the "Open Door", 
and was generally welcomed by the nations. Its 
recommendations were received with respect, but had 
never had the force of demands. It was evident that, 
in future, they would be received only on protest and 
sufferance, unless we could show sufficient determi- 
nation to maintain a place of physical equality with 
European powers and Japan, in China. 

Any one familiar with Oriental-Occidental inter- 
course, as understood in Europe and the Levant, and 
visiting China for the first time in 1909, would have 
said that Constantinople had moved to Peking. It is 
in this aspect that Europe's position in East Asia and 
the Pacific, — its interests, achievements, and influ- 
ences, — compel recognition. They make the Asiatic 
question and the problem of the Pacific the great in- 
ternational and diplomatic issue which Asia alone 
could not make it. The United States was directly 
involved in East Asia in the maintenance of a national 
policy, just as European nations were involved in the 
maintenance of policies on the western frontier of 
Asia. But this situation represented far more to us 
than the creation of another Constantinople, or the 
creation of another Levant. It brought Europe and 
Asia to our Pacific frontier. 

America had now stopped immediate ratification of 
a European-Chinese agreement, the effect of which, 



74 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

otherwise, might easily be her elimination from the 
vital affairs of East Asia. Ready to prevent this, our 
Government gave out an assurance that it would 
strenuously support the claims of Americans to par- 
ticipate in the Hukuang Loan. This was received as 
a challenge by the European groups and governments, 
which did not seem to be dismayed. They had with- 
drawn only for air; they had not done with China; 
they had not relinquished her. And the real diplo- 
matic fight began. 

On June 16, the British and French banks appar- 
ently gave way before China's refusal to ratify in the 
circumstances, and reached an agreement with their 
respective ministers to the effect that the Americans 
were in earnest, and must be approached with the 
object of receiving them into the loan field. They 
approached the German bank, and, after a conference 
of two hours, won over the agent to their view. All 
then sent identical notes to the principals in Europe, 
stating their action. 

The ministers of legation involved now conferred. 
British Minister Jordan assured American Charge 
Fletcher of an amicable settlement, but emphasized 
the difficulties of altering the accomplished agreement, 
the bankers contending that it could not be altered. 
"The European groups and governments," he said, 
"relied on the justice of the Americans to accept par- 
ticipation in future loans, in lieu of claims upon the 
present loan." 

Therefore, the British were unpersuaded and un- 
moved. They had brought down such a clatter and 
pandemonium about their own ears, since instituting 
these negotiations, that they were still waiting for the 
sky and air to clear, in order to see what had happened. 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 75 

On the other hand, the French had always been 
friendly to American efforts, and having perceived an 
ultimate American movement into China, determined 
that when it came, it must be recognized. On their 
part, they advocated going in with the Americans, 
causing thereby a serious disagreement in the ranks of 
the European groups as to policy, with the result that 
the leadership of the groups was assumed by the con- 
servative British, by right of their greater share in the 
enterprise. 

The German Legation in Peking had carefully re- 
frained from entanglements in the case; the French 
Legation held aloof, its interests being identical with 
those of the British ; while the British Legation, which 
was obliged to defend its premier aid agreement, on 
which rested the negotiations, as well as the accom- 
plished loan agreement, took up the struggle, the 
largest part of which was yet to come. 

The change of position, then, amounted to nothing 
at all, in the view of America, whose agreement with 
China referred to the present loan only. We saw that 
our opponents had not been vanquished, though it 
was plain that they were "fenced in" and were look- 
ing for a place to "climb over." The European in- 
terests generously discharged invective at the "Amer- 
ican highwaymen" for the manner of their coming 
into the loan question, "so strikingly characteristic," 
they said, "in its resemblance to the peculiarly Amer- 
ican form of robbery called the 'hold-up." 

Fought over as she was, China was in one of those 
humiliating positions in which she had often been, 
but never less conspicuously. She seemed to disap- 
pear. Her ministers went into an eclipse. Official 
visitors to Liang Tun-yen received word at his door 



76 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

that he was reduced to the flat of his back. Chang 
Chih-tung retired to the seclusion of his family, and 
mourned over the attitude of China's "friends", the 
Americans. He had expressed China's traditional 
hospitality toward Americans, but when he learned 
that his words regarding China's willingness to receive 
American capital had been telegraphed to the American 
Government, he was annoyed, and said that in respect 
to the present loan he thought it was too late. As 
this represented his concurrence with the European 
view, Mr. Fletcher remarked that the American 
Government held that it was not too late. His Amer- 
ican interpreter, in deference to peculiar Chinese sen- 
sibilities, explained that this speech aptly illustrated 
the frankness of Americans, showing that, to use a 
Chinese proverb, "they did not drink tea and talk 
wine, nor drink wine and talk tea ; but when they drank 
tea they talked tea, and when they drank wine they 
talked wine." 

Later, the old gentleman said the matter had given 
him much trouble and concern. "When I try to do 
something," he observed, "some one comes and slaps 
my face, and another picks my back." This referred 
more particularly to America, which had come to him 
in the capacity of the "last straw." 

All the pettiness of this kind of international deal- 
ing is exposed by type. As conferences, code cable- 
grams, and dispatches, it does not appear so mean. 
It seems important, weighty. But in print, all that 
is petty is brought out. On June 19, America was 
still awaiting an offer from China. On June 20, the 
European powers, Britain leading (being the doyen 
in the negotiations), made known to the Washington 
Government their official attitude on the subject of 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 77 

the American demands. With a view to conciliation, 
they all agreed in principle to the justice of America's 
position. 

Then came an interval of ingenious finesse in which 
the Europeans endeavored to discover the full nature 
and extent of American expectations, and the minimum 
with which Americans would be satisfied. Figures 
were required by the practical European financiers, to 
whom, in fact, the whole question was represented as 
being one of dollars and cents. Even the cable tolls 
were made an argument and defense by them, and 
these expenses given as a reason why the accomplished 
agreement could not be broken. 

The machinery of official intercourse is essentially 
clumsy, and in the intervals the participants got into 
mischief. Their strictly penurious view led the Eu- 
ropeans into an error, the outcome of which effectually 
convinced them of the seriousness of the United States 
in the matter, as well as the justice of America's po- 
sition. When they offered a share of the loan to Amer- 
ica on the general principle of the "Open Door", 
without recognizing American right to it by agree- 
ment, the European groups laid violent hands on 
American interests in East Asia. The essence of 
America's position was that she was the possessor of 
rights in the loan. The offer was impossible of ac- 
ceptance; the crux of the case had been reached; 
there was a new European discovery of America, from 
the West. 

When, by her refusal, it was understood that this 
was the basis of America's determination to share in 
the loan, it acted as a damper upon the Europeans. 
They withdrew to make use of the Germans, through 
whom they again pressed for ratification. We were 



78 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

fighting Komura, Komura and the Russian agreements 
with China that, with Russia, were his sheet anchor. 
But we did not know it. 

The action of the German group was now in con- 
flict with the assurances of the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment at Berlin. The inconsistencies showed de- 
moralization in the European ranks. The French 
disavowed German action, and the British wished it 
understood that they were not in sympathy with it. 
The assurances lately given out at Washington showed 
that our Government was disposed to take the offen- 
sive, and as its challenge seemed to have been ac- 
cepted, the contentions appeared to have passed the 
confines of safety. 

On June 21, the Government at Washington re- 
affirmed its position at the Chinese Foreign Office in 
the form of a protest, though it was not presented 
formally in writing. From the American point of 
view, it now seemed that nothing reasonable was to 
be expected of the European interests. Fully de- 
termined to participate to the full extent of equality 
in all loan interests in China, America had then de- 
cided upon the extreme course of appealing direct to 
the Regent of China, in case Chang Chih-tung, on 
German application, attempted to get from the Man- 
chu throne the edict of ratification of the accomplished 
agreement sanctioning the loan. 

Having nothing further to withhold, our people 
thereupon presented their minimum demand in a sub- 
stitute loan agreement, identical with the accomplished 
loan agreement, except that, in addition to the names 
of the European groups, the members of the American 
group were incorporated, thus automatically pro- 
viding equal participation for American finance in the 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 79 

whole loan. It informed the European interests of 
the whole extent of the American Government's ex- 
pectations for the American group in the loan, and 
for American finance in China in future. It reduced 
the pro rata shares of the present loan, and gave the 
Americans a place in the Hankow-Canton section of 
the loan, for which they had only a claim on the basis 
of equal right. This the European groups refused. 
They did so as a matter of course, and as a sine qua non 
of resistance. 

The rainbow papers of European nations who en- 
gaged in the World War do not contain a greater farce 
than was being enacted by the world upon the China 
stage. And they were the greatest of the world's 
affairs. The press dispatches show that the cor- 
respondents were kept hopping around Peking, as well 
as Tokio, Petersburg, Washington, London, Paris, 
and Berlin. In the three latter capitals the exasper- 
ation of the financiers was hardly restrainable. On 
account of presuming to come into the Hankow-Canton 
section of the loan, America was accused of altering her 
demands during the negotiations. She let it be known 
that she desired as a basis of settlement only that 
American financiers should have equality of interests 
with other nations, not excepting those (referring to 
Germany and France) who had no previous right by 
agreement to participate in either of the railways, but 
nevertheless enjoyed that participation. 

America's demands appeared all the more per- 
fidious to the Europeans, because America was visit- 
ing upon the Germans, British, and French the so-called 
"hold-up" successfully practiced by the Germans upon 
the British and French. The European groups were 
now paying for their haste in appropriating American 



80 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

rights in the Hankow-Szechuan Railway. On every side 
but the American, perhaps, there was a rankling convic- 
tion of having blundered, that the most important in- 
terests of the western powers had been bungled. 

It seemed certain that nothing more could happen 
to surprise the actors in this far-eastern drama. But 
now they became aware that Japan was standing in 
the wings. Russia, the ally of France, came for- 
ward, and, on the basis of her industrial and com- 
mercial interests at Hankow, among the largest foreign 
interests in Central China, requested of China to be 
given a share in the loan on equality with all powers, 
in keeping with equal opportunity and the Open Door. 

Leopold, the Belgian King, who held a quarter of a 
million dollars' worth of debenture bonds of the 
Hankow-Canton Railway, also came forward and 
presented a paper which Belgium claimed entitled her 
to the first right-of-loan aid for the Hankow-Canton 
line, and therefore a place in the loan. 

This claim, while dismissed by the European groups 
as a "mere question of money", caused apprehension. 
The debentures were peculiarly worded, and were sup- 
posed to admit of a dangerous interpretation which 
would make them a valuable asset to a military, ad- 
venturous power — hinting at Russia ? or Japan ? 

The affair illumined the mutations of East- West 
diplomacy. Some of the participants viewed it as a 
disheartening and unworthy wrangle, all the more 
mean because of the paltry sum total of the loan — 
promising little returns to either the Americans or 
Europeans. The Europeans could not see "what 
credit America would gain with China, who was sure 
to resent her interference, etc.," forgetting the prin- 
ciple involved and overlooking the future altogether. 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 81 

At last came he who has come to be called the man 
in the mask. Japan had a sound right-of-aid agree- 
ment by which Japanese engineers were maintained by 
China for aid on the Hankow-Canton Line. Asserting 
her place for purposes of record as a possessor of rights 
of participation, she intrusted her interests to the care 
of her ally, Great Britain, and then dropped from view. 
But we began to see what it meant to fight Komura. 

After this witch's scene came more toil and trouble. 
Numerous proposals bubbled up out of China, ema- 
nating from the European groups and governments, 
both of which were disposed still to fight for time. 
These had always the same object of preserving the 
accomplished agreement, and the right of the Eu- 
ropean groups themselves to mete out portions to a 
fourth party, as against America's contention that her 
right, emanating from China, necessarily excluded 
the services of a third party in fulfilling its provisions. 
The State Department, however, admitted the desira- 
bility of friendly cooperation with the banks and 
governments in some plan to enable China to fulfill 
her obligations toward America, and held itself in a 
position to receive any overtures they might make. 

It was a humiliating situation for the European in- 
terests. In fact, the position of the European groups 
was impossible, but even more so was that of their 
governments behind them, for the reason that the loan 
negotiations had been conducted by the European 
groups under the supervision of their governments, 
without which supervision foreign loans, at least by 
France and Germany, cannot be made. These gov- 
ernments had sanctioned the loan agreement and were 
parties to the ignoring of America's rights. Their 
position was diplomatically untenable. 



82 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

A sharp corner had to be turned in order to escape 
from this position and facilitate an understanding. 
The three nations thereupon issued a statement to the 
effect that the responsibility for making a friendly 
arrangement to satisfy the American financiers rested 
upon the European groups. However sincere in their 
object, they thus seemed to be washing their hands 
of the matter. In the language of the arena in Peking, 
Great Britain, France, and Germany elected to try to 
"climb over." 

These tactics failed. The European groups and 
their legations in Peking were made irresponsible 
before the Chinese, with whom conspiracies were re- 
sumed. Instead of smoothing the way to a settlement, 
the fight was made more acute. And China sat down 
to watch it, only to be more closely invested by the 
Europeans. 

Up to this moment, the Washington Government 
had relied, for appreciation of the justice of its conten- 
tions, upon the general understanding of friendship 
and good will between the two governments of Amer- 
ica and China. It was an axiom that in whatever it 
might undertake in China, American enterprise started 
out with one prime asset — a position of favor with 
the Chinese Government, due, it is popularly sup- 
posed, to such acts by America as the remission of the 
Boxer indemnity. In fact, China has repeatedly 
solicited American pressure to force American capital 
and enterprise upon China, with the aim of safeguard- 
ing equality of right and the Open Door. This asset 
of favor in China's eyes had now actually been used 
to the utmost to stay the "Hukuang Loan." And 
the Washington Government still feared that per- 
suasion from Europe might succeed with China in 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 83 

defeating American demands. It looked as though 
China, in spite of all, would ratify the loan, and that 
the European governments would "climb over" and 
get away, in spite of America's most strenuous pro- 
tests. 

America seemed determined that they should neither 
"climb over" nor get away, and Secretary of State 
Knox pressed his attack to nail them in. Charge 
Fletcher consulted British Minister Jordan on the 
subject of the influence brought to bear upon China 
to force her to break her agreement with America, 
calling attention to the serious results that would 
accrue from this cause in case China was led into a 
false position. 

"Yes," replied the Minister, "I know." 

"Well, I believed it best to tell you," said the Charge, 
"so that, in case it came up afterward, you would 
know what our position was." 

On July 11, the situation of stalemate was con- 
tinued, when the European groups in London recon- 
sidered the question, and failed to reach any conclu- 
sion on the subject of further concessions to America. 
Then opened at Peking ten exciting days in the annals 
of China's finance, ending in American success. Their 
China agents, the Peking banks, visited Chang Chih- 
tung and laid before him a statement to the effect that 
they had offered the Americans a chance to come into 
the loan, but the Americans had not done so. 

On July 13, Fletcher discussed with Jordan the 
situation caused by the failure of the conference in 
London. And on account of the continued pressure 
upon China through the European banks, the fore- 
most of which was the Hongkong-Shanghai bank, — 
the British concern in the loan, without whose sup- 



84 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

port any influence directed at China in the matter 
would be virtually without effect, — Fletcher stated 
that the position of the Washington Government was 
such that the British Legation would be considered 
responsible for any action which the British bank took 
in pressing China to ratify the Hukuang Loan. 

That this warning from the American to the British 
Government was given in Peking was denied by an 
official of the British Foreign Office through the press, 
but it is nevertheless what actually occurred. 

The same representations were repeated to the head 
of the Hongkong and Shanghai bank in Peking, Mr. 
Hillier, who said, speaking for himself, that he was 
not doing anything. 

This was our last effort to reach the Germans in their 
activities through the British, who were responsible by 
reason of their having negotiated the loan. American 
diplomacy was exhausted. Moreover, the reluctance 
of the European groups to give up the struggle 
showed that they had the support of their gov- 
ernments. In this state of deadlock, and the con- 
fusion of the Chinese Government on the question, 
matters were carried beyond the point of further dis- 
cussion. Three months had elapsed, and China was 
still unable to satisfy American demands for the carry- 
ing out of the obligations of the agreements of August 
15, 1903, and July 18, 1904. Continued pressure 
upon China by the European groups, and the situation 
culminated. On July 21, 1909, President Taft cabled 
America's final representation direct to Prince Chun, 
Regent of China. 

The contents of Taft's cablegram were explained in 
the following official statement by Secretary of State 
Knox: 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 85 

[The President] felt warranted in resorting to the 
somewhat unusual method of communicating direct 
with His Imperial Highness, Prince Chun, Regent of 
the Chinese Empire, informing the latter that he was 
greatly disturbed at the reports of certain prejudiced 
opposition to the Chinese Government arranging for 
equal participation by American capital in the Hu- 
kuang Loan. The President pointed out that the 
wishes of the United States were based upon broad 
national and imperial principles of equity and good 
policy in which a due regard for the best interests of 
China had a prominent part. He reasserted his in- 
tense personal interest in making the use of American 
capital in the development of China an instrument in 
the promotion of China's welfare, and an increase in 
her material prosperity, without entanglements or 
embarrassments that might affect the growth of her 
independent political power and the preservation of 
her territorial integrity. 

This action was unprecedented. The furore created 
in the Forbidden City ended in the Prince Regent 
summoning the members of the Chinese Foreign 
Office, and of the Grand Council, which included Chang 
Chih-tung. 

Outside the Forbidden City, and in Europe, Taft's 
action was regarded as an unwarranted misuse of 
executive privilege, which, in different circumstances, 
would have been met with executive retaliation. An 
attempt was put forward to draw out the personal in- 
terference of the German Emperor, a project that had 
some ground for success, but was reluctantly relin- 
quished. Manila Bay was avoided. An agreement 
satisfactory to all parties quickly resulted. It only 
remained for the American Charge to arrange with 



86 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

China an increase in the sum total of the loan, so that 
the admittance of a fourth party would not diminish 
the amount of the original allotments to participants, 
thus furnishing a happy solution of this long and 
bitter contention. 

Speaking of the President's cablegram to the Prince 
Regent, the State Department stated that "as a re- 
sult of the communication, an agreement was reached 
with the Chinese Government that American bankers 
should take one fourth of the total loan, and that 
Americans and American materials should have all 
the same rights, privileges, preferences, and discretions 
for all present and prospective lines that were reserved 
to the British, German, and French nationals, and 
materials under the terms of the original agreement," 
etc., and, "after several months of continuous nego- 
tiation, the right to such American participation has 
been acknowledged, and a final settlement on this 
basis has been completed." 

And what was it all about ? On May 23, 1910, the 
Hukuang Loan was signed by the four groups in 
Paris. The achievement was a victory for American 
commerce, trade, the influence of American institu- 
tions, and for the Open Door, in China. It was a 
successful vindication of the principle of equal op- 
portunity there. By virtue of it, America's position 
in China became a new subject of study. American 
commercial opportunity was placed on a par in China 
with that of other great industrial nations, and on 
account of her peculiar relation to China, America was 
involved in greater responsibilities there. She was the 
practical defender of the Open Door — she had ex- 
onerated herself from the old charge of profiting at 
the expense of the powers who had been the champions 



FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE 87 

of foreign interests. She was not only holding up her 
end in the polieies which all had recognized, but she 
was defending East Asia and the interests of the 
Pacific against Europe. 

But the most remarkable thing about it was that 
Japan never appeared in the negotiations. She re- 
mained in the background. But it carried to her per- 
haps its most powerful lesson, the object lesson of 
American capital which Japan had learned five years 
before with respect to herself, her integrity, her safety, 
and her material prosperity. It was explained to her, 
in the words of Taft, when he "reasserted his intense 
personal interest in making the use of American capital 
in the development of China an instrument in the 
promotion of China's welfare, and an increase in her 
material prosperity, without entanglements or em- 
barrassments that might affect the growth of her in- 
dependent political power and the preservation of her 
territorial integrity." 

That was to Japan a challenge which neither Komura 
nor his successors have allowed Japan to forget, even 
for a moment. 



CHAPTER VI 

Second Line of Defense 

It was a famous victory. We thought to make 
stable our commerce, make permanent our friendly 
and helpful relations with China, which were three 
quarters of a century old before Japan came on the 
map, even of the Pacific, much less of the world, and 
perhaps restore our merchant marine which had owed 
its existence to the Pacific. 

Although we had a good deal to do before realizing 
this, the opportunitites were greater than ever before, 
and China herself had been waiting for years for the 
signs of new life in us which she now perceived. China 
needed what we could supply much more than we needed 
what she could give, for life itself was the stake to her. 

There seems no reason to doubt, from what we know 
now, that action such as President Taft took in tele- 
graphing Prince Chun, had it been in opposition to 
Japan, quickly would have led to war. Yet our Gov- 
ernment followed up its action in Central China, as 
represented by the Hukuang Loan, along the same 
lines in the neighborhood of Japan's principal inter- 
ests in China. It raised the "Manchurian question." 

Foreign danger to China, and the greatest menace to 
the principle of the Open Door and integrity of China's 
territory and sovereignty, were establishing themselves 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 89 

in Manchuria in the form of special rights claimed 
there by Russia and Japan. Through respective al- 
liances of these powers with France and Great 
Britain to protect those assumed rights, the latter 
seemed to be crystallizing. In her struggle with the 
powers, China found them aligned in two groups that 
divided China proper and Manchuria between them. 
Of the great powers with which she had to contend 
most, Great Britain, France, and Germany were of 
the first group, while Russia and Japan, supported by 
their allies, formed the second. On the basis of an 
understanding with Great Britain and France, re- 
spectively, that they should be left unmolested in 
Manchuria, 1 Russia and Japan pursued a negative 
policy in China proper, and this is the reason Russia 
and Japan did not appear in the negotiation of the 
Hukuang Loan. By the same token, France and 
Great Britain would not appear directly in the affairs 
of Manchuria, where all comers would be met by 
Japan, who had won the upper hand by battle, and 
Russia. But, nevertheless, all four of these powers 
were the Manchurian allies, constituting the real ob- 
stacles to the principles to which America was com- 
mitted in East Asia. America was in conflict with 
them all, and it was in their most exclusive region 
that America undertook measures of self interest 
looking to the preservation of the Open Door doctrine 
and the prevention of future conflicts. 

Manchuria was a political tinder box. For fifteen 
years it had been known as the appropriate base for 
the conquest of East Asia. John Hay had referred to 
it, and the surrounding regions, as superseding the 

1 From the British-Russian, Scott-Muravieff, agreement of April 28, 
1899. 



90 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Balkans in respect to the great question of the future 
laid upon mankind. The press of the whole world 
had for several years emphasized the gravity of the 
political situation in Manchuria, due to the conflict 
of the special rights of Russia and Japan with the 
treaty rights of other nations. China, in her treaties 
with all nations, uniformly granted to each all the 
rights enjoyed by any one. But Japan and Russia 
said, in effect, that special rights guaranteed by treaty, 
and inherent in immemorial neighborhood, were there 
consolidated in peaceable and in warlike practice. 
At this time the Japanese freely claimed that the 
bodies of thousands of their killed were a part of the 
Manchurian soil, and therefore the tenure of Japan's 
special rights there was secured by war and blood. 
The obvious meaning of this boast was this : If you do 
not accept this claim, bring on your guns. 

America could not accept it, and though the difficul- 
ties were great, she nevertheless took steps for the 
solution of the Manchurian question which was 
threatening the existence of the Open Door policy. 
Before the diplomacy of the Hukuang Loan was 
finished, aware that the principles of the Open Door 
and the integrity of China would owe their survival to 
the outcome in Manchuria, the Government at Wash- 
ington had under way, for the solution of that perhaps 
insoluble problem, what may be called a plan of state, 
of which the invasion of the Hukuang Loan was the 
beginning. Secretary of State Knox indicated this 
when he said : " The action of the government in re- 
spect to the pending (Hukuang) loan was but the first 
step in a new phase of the traditional policy of the 
United States in China and with special reference to 
Manchuria." 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 91 

Now came the second step, the most ambitious 
diplomatic project promoted by America in East 
Asia, introduced under portentous political circum- 
stances, as may be seen by a set of dramatic incidents. 
Following the Portsmouth Treaty, and Ito-Harriman 
agreement, the greatest problems of political, indus- 
trial, and social progress for China developed in Man- 
churia. In the north she had to deal for the time 
only with quiescent Russia ; but in the south was 
Japan, not merely active, but aggressive, in promoting 
extension of her interests, principally her industrial 
and commercial expansion, quickly forcing Russia, as 
a matter of self-protection, to follow in her political, 
if not in her commercial footsteps, and of course 
involving Great Britain and France. 

Came to the front many questions affecting boun- 
daries, natural resources to be opened up, trade, and 
especially railways and jurisdiction. China's states- 
men were never at any moment deluded : they per- 
ceived that the main issue in all this was China's sov- 
ereignty and integrity. She undertook the only con- 
sistent dealing with nations resembling a foreign policy 
which ever had been hers. The line of it was dic- 
tated by her situation and problem in Manchuria. 

In 1905, at the end of the war, the northern terminus 
of her own Manchurian railways was at Hsin-min-tun, 
thirty-five miles west of Mukden. On April 15, 1907, 
Japan sold to China a military railway used during the 
war, connecting these two places. This was in ful- 
fillment of the terms of the convention negotiated at 
Peking by Komura, with Prince Ching, December 22, 
1905, to adjust the post-bellum relations between 
China and Japan in Manchuria. China's commis- 
sioners to negotiate this convention with Komura in- 



92 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

eluded, among others, Yuan Shih-k'ai, who later be- 
came president of the Republic, assisted by Hsu Shih- 
chang, and Tong Shao-yi, who had been a student at 
Columbia University, New York. In the minutes of 
the convention, a reservation was made by Japan, 
binding China not to construct any competing line 
parallel with the railways of Manchuria acquired by 
Japan from Russia, as well as the reservation of Japan's 
right to be consulted regarding new railways there. 
But there was nothing in contravention of China's 
rights in the zone of her own railways, and nothing 
that went beyond the guarantees that had been given 
Russia before. 

In 1907, the Manchurian government was remodeled, 
and a new administration inaugurated. Hsu Shih- 
chang soon became Viceroy. Tong Shao-yi became 
Governor at Mukden, and it was in this capacity that 
he negotiated the purchase of the railway to bring 
China's terminus to Mukden, and again pledged China 
to Japan's reservation. 

Tong Shao-yi, the American student, by the very 
reason of his training and his political conceptions, was 
inevitably destined, in such a position, to enact the 
obvious conflict, on a scale, between Japan and Amer- 
ica. He understood, perhaps better than any Chinese 
official, the importance of railways built and controlled 
by China in Manchuria as a foil and buffer to foreign 
railways existing there, which he saw otherwise were 
to control commerce and trade, if not administration, 
just as they do elsewhere. If China hoped to com- 
pete with Japan in the development of communica- 
tions, and to save a share of railway power in Man- 
churia, a strong policy in opposition to Japan and 
Russia must be adopted. Means must be taken to 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 93 

determine two things : First, the meaning of the Jap- 
anese terms of reservation, and second, the temper of 
Japan, who, in violent contradiction of her motives 
for war with Russia declared in the beginning, had 
begun to lay stress upon the fact that as a result of a 
great and costly war, she had expended much blood 
and treasure for what she now held to be the few 
advantages she had in Manchuria. In other words, 
China was faced with the problem of finding out what 
she herself could or could not do in her own provinces 
of Manchuria, without crossing Japan. 

China took bold action. It was now that Tong 
Shao-yi arranged with the American Consul General 
at Mukden (Mr. Willard Straight) a plan for American 
capital to finance China's important Manchurian en- 
terprise. With the cooperation of the Viceroy, he 
arranged with British contractors, Pauling and Com- 
pany, for an extension of the Hsin-min-tun Railway 
northward to Fa-ku-men, and this arrangement was 
sanctioned by the Throne in Peking. By an oversight 
in the British Legation in Peking, British interests 
were thus allowed to appear as the antagonists of 
Japanese, and this the British Government had to 
repudiate to avoid international clashing. But the 
fat was in the fire. 

The inadvertence of a small Chinese official in 
Tientsin apprised Japan of China's action, and she 
complained of unfairness, protesting against the con- 
struction of the line on the ground that it was in 
proximity to the South Manchurian Railway and 
parallel to it, and therefore competitive. This posi- 
tion was supported by Japan's ally, Great Britain, 
who declared that the British contractors must sat- 
isfy Japan's objections. A portion of the British 



94 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

press attacked Sir Edward Grey, British Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs, their Government's Japanese 
policy in Manchuria, and the Anglo-Japanese alli- 
ance itself, but failed in any way to alter the situation. 
China proved by this experiment that she could not 
build a railway that started within thirty-five miles 
of the South Manchurian Railway. 

In her contentions with Japan, China endeavored 
to get an authoritative statement from her neighbor, 
defining some limit of the zone of Japan's railway in 
Manchuria beyond which China could build railways. 
She failed. Although Japan laid down several plans 
for cooperation with China, it was always with the 
object of making all railway construction part of her 
own system and contributory to it. China thereby 
learned that Japan had appropriated the area of the 
projected Hsin-min-tun Railway into Mongolia, as 
well as that of the former Russian Railway, and ex- 
pected to control all railway construction in Southern 
Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia. 

Tong Shao-yi was beaten but undismayed. He 
began the second step in China's foreign policy. This 
was an undertaking to carry out at once the plan to 
enlist the financial aid of America. What means he 
took to do this is well worthy a chapter of its own in 
the story of conflict between America and Japan. 

Some Japanese assert that the conflict between 
America and Japan over Manchuria was the result of 
the machinations of a party at the American Con- 
sulate-General in Mukden, humorously referred to in 
American diplomatic circles in East Asia, at the time, 
as the "Mukden cabinet." It consisted of the young 
consular officer, Mr. Willard Straight, and an assist- 
ant, Mr. George Marvin, a former teacher of Groton 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 95 

School, who had reached Manchuria in the shadow 
of the name of Theodore Roosevelt. Besides these, 
there was the young and talented German Consul, 
Herr Metzger, as counsellor, latent, the British Consul, 
Mr. Willis. 

But the Japanese imputation is only another indi- 
cation of the delicate character of the relations that exist 
almost by nature between Japan, who had no money 
and of whom it was suicidal for China to accept aid, 
and America who was a friend in need. The fact is 
that the Chinese administration at Mukden, then 
newly established, needed very large sums of money 
for industrial and other purposes, and for railways. 
The Peking Government approving, it turned to the 
United States for help. The administration decided 
that China must borrow at least thirty-five million 
dollars American money, fifty million dollars if pos- 
sible, at once, with ten times that amount behind it, 
and with this money introduce a new and healthy in- 
fluence, not only into Manchuria, poisoned by foreign 
rivalries and invasion, but into northeastern China. 
These plans were participated in by Yuan Shih-k'ai in 
Peking, where a foreign policy to meet the necessities 
of this region, entirely different from what Komura 
had imagined, or desired, was worked out. 

When this had been decided, but unconnected with 
it, our Congress restored to China a large part of its 
share of the Boxer indemnity, a sum almost sufficient 
to meet the requirements of Manchuria for adminis- 
trative objects. Tong Shao-yi endeavored to get it 
assigned for such use. 

This money is largely set aside for the education of 
Chinese students in America, and the expenditure of 
it regulated jointly by America and China. A similar 



96 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

arrangement for its expenditure in Manchuria would 
have lashed America to the mast of Manchurian 
affairs, because it would have involved payments and 
supervision of expenditure of the same for about 
thirty-five years, at Mukden. By involving us in a 
physical capacity in Manchuria, it would have been a 
good diplomatic achievement for the Manchurian ad- 
ministration. This was an innuendo, the suggestion 
of which was attributed to the "Mukden cabinet." 
When it reached Peking, the plan was most unwelcome 
to the American Government, and a sharp diplomatic 
passage-at-arms occurred. Aside from depriving the 
Chinese people of the direct benefits of the remission, 
to which they were entitled, Pockhill, the American 
Minister, regarded it as a mischievous scheme for en- 
listing American aid, which, if carried out, would de- 
feat the aims of Congress. America could not be hood- 
winked into side issues, and it failed. 

This, however, was only a ballon d'essai, — one of 
the many plans of Tong and his associates, — among 
whom were Liang Tun-yen, and behind all Yuan Shih- 
k'ai. But it was important as another unconscious 
answer to Komura's assertion that China objected to 
American money in Manchuria's railways or in any 
enterprise whatever. In the drama of modern China, 
Tong Shao-yi has been a political comet whose career 
in the field of Pacific international astronomy is worthy 
of the study of those "by gosh" astrologers who so 
impressively inhabit the observatories of the State 
Department in Washington. The most spectacular 
of Tong Shao-yi's acts in connection with Manchuria 
was the last. It presaged his exit from the stage there 
and was like unto a rocket's glare. Seeing that he 
could not get the indemnity money appropriated for 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 97 

use in Manchuria, he undertook to revive plans for 
American aid in Manchuria, which had not been 
favorably received hitherto on account of disturbed 
financial conditions in America. They involved the 
Harriman scheme, the "Manchurian Bank", and 
other ideas which might save Manchuria to China, and 
safeguard China's independence and the Open Door. 

In its inception, this was the whole object of Tong 
Shao-yi's mission, which was now devised to go to Wash- 
ington, for the purpose of formally thanking America 
for the remission of the Boxer indemnity, though the 
mission was accredited to Europe as well as to America. 

In June, 1908, Tong resigned his office of Governor 
of Mukden, and on September 24, with imperial ap- 
proval of his scheme, a commission to thank the 
United States, with a spending allowance of perhaps 
two hundred and eighty thousand dollars, and with many 
valuable gifts taken from the Manchu ancestral palaces 
at Mukden and elsewhere, he set out for Washington. 

Japanese observed that Tong took with him the 
late American Vice-consul of Mukden as courrier de 
mission, and by them this scheme also was charged up 
to the "Mukden cabinet." Before it left Peking, its 
European opponents and detractors, the Manchurian 
allies, along with Japan, declared the mission, the 
object of which was apprehended, to be a political 
mistake, and its failure to be a foregone conclusion. 
Its fate seemed to justify their worst prophecies. Its 
objects were wholly legitimate, praiseworthy, patri- 
otic, and above criticism. It failed from a combi- 
nation of Machiavellian circumstances so amazing that 
it is doubtful whether any diplomat schooled in the 
vagaries of Peking politics could have foreseen them, 
and the blame falls mostly upon ourselves. 



98 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Both Japan and Great Britain took note of the 
circumstances in which the mission was devised ; 
namely, it was a part of China's first attempt at a 
foreign policy, and it received its encouragement from, 
and would depend for its success upon, the interest 
which American finance and the American Government 
were to take in the subject of China's promised develop- 
ment. Nothing could have been devised better cal- 
culated to show us the dangerous mines underlying 
international relations across the Pacific Ocean. And 
we were slowly becoming conscious of them. 

The wrecking of China's first attempt at a foreign 
policy should be exposed. Headed by Tong Shao-yi, 
the delegation was saluted at its departure by the 
American military guard and representatives of the 
powers to whom it was addressed, gathered at the rail- 
way station. While it was in Japan, Harriman's 
bankers, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, of which Jacob 
SchifT was the head, informed the State Department 
that they were ready to finance the "Manchurian 
Bank", if satisfactory terms could be arranged. 

On November 22, 1908, when Tong arrived at San 
Francisco, Japan was ready for him, making it the 
occasion to arrange with America the Root-Takahira 
agreement, a measure intended "to prevent misunder- 
standings about China." Among other things it 
pledged mutual confidence in matters concerning East 
Asia. The strain between the two peoples of Japan 
and America had not been appreciably reduced since 
the California school question had arisen two years 
before, and signs of friendliness with China were the 
last thing likely to promote that consummation, es- 
pecially in connection with anything resembling a 
foreign policy growing up in China. 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 99 

A press correspondent, Mr. Callan O'Laughlin, was 
instrumental in the execution of this idea, and upon 
the consummation of the agreement, as a recognition 
of his services, was made an overnight Assistant Sec- 
retary of State — the whole a typical illustration of 
the casual and trifling management of the most im- 
portant foreign affairs by the Government and people 
of the United States. Naturally Mr. O'Laughlin 
resigned at once. Making a farce of government, 
in the greatest office in a republic, would have deeply 
humiliated the American people had they understood 
it. But as the matter concerned "foreign affairs" 
and "diplomacy", those whose attention was called 
to it only laughed. 

The news of the consummation of the Root-Taka- 
hira agreement was telegraphed by the Japanese from 
Honolulu to East Asia ten days in advance of its 
actual conclusion, November 30, 1908, causing a great 
shock to China, and deranging America's own diplo- 
macy, if it could be called a diplomacy. In the Grand 
Council in Peking, an inquiry was made into the basis 
of Tong Shao-yi's mission, by his enemies and those 
of Yuan Shih-k'ai, that knelled its end. Liang Tun- 
yen, active head of the Chinese Foreign Office, stated 
that the signing of the Root-Takahira agreement at 
such a time was a rebuff to China and complained bit- 
terly of it as an unfriendly act on the part of America. 
"Why," he inquired, "could not America have waited 
until after Tong Shao-yi's arrival ?" 

The State Department cabled in haste to Peking to 
explain that the agreement was an additional surety 
of China's rights in Manchuria. We were of course 
then obliged to show the document to China, whom we 
insulted with a note accompanying the text, which 



100 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

expressed the hope that China would recognize therein, 
"the logical outcome of America's traditional and 
frequently enunciated policy of friendliness to China, 
and her desire to see the maintenance of its territorial 
and administrative integrity." 

We were China's host ; her envoy was the national 
guest, and she had nothing to do but express her 
pleasure at our exalted magnanimity. 

But rarely has "diplomacy" with us reached a more 
refined, if unconscious, "Oriental" cruelty than when, 
with all the exquisite ignorance of blundering insult 
we exchanged the signatures of the Root-Takahira 
agreement just on the day China's envoy reached 
Washington and became the guest of the Capital. 

What did the agreement say? Its opening plati- 
tudes were rather silly. They stated a mutual desire 
on the part of the two governments "to encourage the 
free and peaceful development of their commerce on 
the Pacific Ocean", the determination "to support, 
by all pacific means at their disposal, the independence 
and integrity of China and the principle of equal op- 
portunity", and "to maintain the existing status quo 
in the region above mentioned." 

The important part was that referring to the " status 
quo." In the first place in so far as ' k status quo " could 
exist, it had only just been set up by war, and there 
was no longer such a thing as "pacific means" influ- 
encing the independent and integral status of China. 
Therefore, Japan being master at arms, and we herein 
having cried ourselves without the pale, the " status 
quo" was in her hands. 

What was the " status quo?" The only " status quo" 
respecting the objects, because of which Japan hood- 
winked us into this agreement, concerned Manchuria, 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 101 

which was the whole question of China's independence, 
integrity, sovereignty, equal opportunity, and open 
door. The only "status quo" was that contained in 
the Russian basis for Japan's predatory descent upon 
the Asiatic continent beyond Korea, and behind the 
Ussuri Province which predatory Russia had seized 
in 1860, which same basis formed the foundation for 
the predatory pact which, through our further blun- 
ders, she wrote with Russia later. This basis was 
something our State Department knew nothing about, 
as will be shown. Only Japan knew what the "status 
quo" was, and she wouldn't tell. There was no other 
thing by which to identify anything resembling "status 
quo." The use of the term was a reflection upon our 
intelligence. At the time the agreement was signed, 
it had been fourteen years since anything definable 
as "status quo" had existed in Manchuria — not since 
the Japan-China War. Manchuria was a word ex- 
pressive of flux, and its status flux was now that of 
Japanese aggression. This was not a thing Tong 
Shao-yi wanted. China didn't want it; she was 
fighting it, as for life itself. She was seeking a safe- 
guard and a remedy. She wanted to ward off just 
what has come to her, hurried on by our ignorant and 
supine pandering to Japan. In the Root-Takahira 
agreement we washed our hands, in platitudes insult- 
ing to China and to our own honor, of everything but 
peaceable defense of our great doctrine of the Open 
Door, equal opportunity, integrity of territory, and 
sovereignty in China. The Root-Takahira agreement- 
gave Japan an open road. It was a piece of hopeless 
insanity by the American State Department. "No- 
body home" is a charitable absolution of our Govern- 
ment for that act. Why should we sign Japan's agree- 



102 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

ments ? Are we the aggressors in China ? Was it our 
Government that threatened the Open Door, the in- 
tegrity — sovereignty of China ? The Government 
of the United States did not know what the Root- 
Takahira agreement meant. But with a grand air of 
superior wisdom it explained it to China. Oh, yes, 
we told her what it meant. 

The "god of Heaven" who had long dwelt with Jap- 
anese arms seemed to the Chinese to have set his seal 
on the banners of Japanese diplomacy. Our expla- 
nation was never accepted by China. Yuan Shih-k'ai, 
who was sponsor for the mission, had many enemies 
at court, and was now finally discredited and later 
was dismissed. In the meantime the great Empress- 
Dowager and Emperor died, furnishing the occasion 
for Tong Shao-yi's recall. America made a belated, 
guilty, and strenuous effort to save Yuan Shih-k'ai, 
enlisting in the attempt Great Britain, who thought 
that Japan was going too far in breaking down Chinese 
initiative and effort at self-preservation, but failed. 
Tong retired, and for a year and a half remained in 
seclusion, as did his elder, Yuan Shih-k'ai, so humiliated 
that he refused to see visitors, including Americans. 

After the State Department's gropings after nothing, 
and getting much less, from Japan, in the Root-Taka- 
hira agreement, it devolved upon us to take the initia- 
tive and organize our defenses of the Open Door. We 
were the last of the powers to wake up, and we found 
we had drawn fire from them all, either in South 
China or North. 

What was it all about? Harriman had shown 
that both Japan and Russia were striving, each for a 
modus vivendi, in Manchuria and Mongolia. Al- 
though the "war party", or an aroused general patri- 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 103 

otism in Japan, had made it impossible to realize the 
plan of the Ito-Harriman agreement, the Japanese- 
Russian "sphere" was susceptible to some plan for 
its development. And the protestations of Japan still 
led our Government to believe that the Open Door 
would have a place in shaping its future. 

As to China, she now learned from Tong at Wash- 
ington of Komura's action three years before that 
terminated the Ito-Harriman agreement, and, thor- 
oughly disillusioned by the Root-Takahira agreement 
affair as to the existence of any special patriotic sympa- 
thy or bond of common defense against predatory 
nations, which she could tie to, China recognized that 
she was back again at her beginnings. As for us, we 
simply saw that we would have to do John Hay's work 
all over again. 

We now had physical rights in Manchuria. Al- 
though Japan, backed by Great Britain, had vetoed 
China's plans for developing China's railway beyond 
Hsin-min-tun, we had other joint enterprises with 
her which could not be justly claimed to transgress 
Japanese interests or prejudices. And there seemed a 
definite and agreeable possibility remaining to China, 
notwithstanding the default of the Ito-Harriman 
plan, of neutralizing, jointly with the powers, the 
foreign railways in Manchuria, especially through the 
cooperation of neutral American interests whose 
political motives none could suspect. 

This was a time of vast conceptions in relations 
across the Pacific, inspired by the deeds of Japan, by 
the great ideas left by Mr. Harriman, by Jacob Schiff, 
and President Taft, as well as men of other countries 
concerned. These ideas were shared by a number of 
powerful American statesmen and financiers. 



104 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

The plan of the American Government, which had 
been developing through the loan complications in 
China proper and by the demands of China, was 
working itself out, and America took the initiative. 
With a view to the practical solution, for all nations, of 
the Manchurian problem, in which was involved a 
large American trade which we were endeavoring to 
protect and expand, our Government proceeded to 
enter Manchuria through the medium of physical 
interests, as it had entered China proper. 

Our ability to enter Manchuria with physical in- 
terests, precisely as was the case in China proper, de- 
pended upon the circumstance of a previous arrange- 
ment. And, as in the case mentioned, we had such 
assets with which to begin. On August 11, 1908, the 
administrative Government at Mukden had made an 
agreement providing for the use of American capital 
amounting to one hundred million dollars for a "Man- 
churian Bank", and the building of a railway extension 
from Tsitsihar to Aigun, in Russian-Manchuria, com- 
pleting a line to Tsitsihar from Kinchou on the Gulf 
of Chihli, the construction of which she had assigned 
to the British contractors, Pauling and Company. 

China was anxious to promote measures that would 
bind together the two parts of Manchuria, claimed as 
special spheres by Russia and Japan, so as to insure re- 
gard for the rights of all nations there, thus also securing 
/safety and opportunity and a future for herself there. 
As our agreement was negotiated through the Amer- 
ican Consul General at Mukden, who visited the 
region of the proposed railway, and whose movements 
were reported to both the Russian and Japanese le- 
gations in Peking as being in connection with the 
investigation of the traffic at Aigun, especially in cat- 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 105 

tie, that might be diverted into China, both Japanese 
and Russians later raised the cry, "Mukden cabinet !" 
Russia claimed the road was intended to capture the 
whole winter traffic of the Amur. 

But regardless of obstacles and the misgivings of 
the prophets of calamity, American effort went on. 
While the attention of the world was focused on the 
fight over the two railway loans in China proper, Mr. 
Harriman was still intent on his scheme for a trans- 
portation belt line of the world. In December, 1908, 
he had negotiated with Russia's agents respecting 
control of her Manchurian railway. In June, 1909, 
while Manchurian schemes were otherwise in abey- 
ance, Harriman, in Paris, discussed with Mr. Noetzlin, 
head of the International Wagons-Lits which had a 
leased railway service to Peking, the Kinchou-Aigun 
Railway scheme, which had been described to him by 
Mr. Straight in Switzerland the year before, when the 
latter carried home the memoranda of his investiga- 
tions and agreements, and which was being fostered 
by Kuhn, Loeb, and Company. Harriman sounded 
Noetzlin on the possibility of organizing an inter- 
national syndicate to buy up the Russian line in 
Manchuria, and Noetzlin went to St. Petersburg and 
discussed it with M. Kokovtseff, Minister of Finance. 
Kokovtseff had arranged for an agent to meet Har- 
riman in Vienna to consult about the plans, but Mr. 
Harriman was then ill and was advised by the specialists 
whom he consulted in Vienna to return home and 
make a final settlement of his affairs. Kokovtseff, 
who was pleased, after long efforts, to find a pro- 
spective purchaser, agreed to promote the proposal by 
recommending the sale of the line as soon as he had 
visited East Asia, which he was about to do. And 



106 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Noetzlin in August communicated these facts to 
Harriman at Paris. On September 9, shortly after 
reaching New York, Mr. Harriman died, and the 
future of the plan fell to others. 

After the affair of the Hukuang Loan, when con- 
tentions had reached a state of deadlock, absorbing 
the attention of the powers, Kuhn, Loeb, and Com- 
pany, possessing the Tsitsihar-Aigun agreement join- 
ing its rights with those of the British contractors, 
Pauling and Company, October 2, 1909, signed with 
them and with Hsi Liang, the new Viceroy of Man- 
churia, a preliminary joint contract for the Kinchou- 
Aigun Railway. 

Notwithstanding the misgivings and recriminations 
from Japan, this neutral enterprise carried railway 
development in Manchuria entirely outside the zone 
of the Japanese Railway and of Japanese vested in- 
terests, outside the war zone, and into Mongolia. 
America was to furnish the money. In addition to 
traversing no vested interests of Japan, it provided 
for beneficial development of Manchuria to the ad- 
vantage of all concerned, and carried forward the 
basis for neutral interference in Manchuria. 

For ten years the Government of Peking had con- 
sidered every possibility of continuing northward 
China's railway outside the Great Wall, finished to 
Hsin-min-tun in 1902, which this scheme now solved. 
When the American banking group interested itself, 
the ground was all prepared. Na Tung, Chief Min- 
ister of Foreign Affairs for China, when approached 
respecting the execution of this scheme, said signifi- 
cantly : "Of course I can do nothing in the matter. 
Hsu Shih-chang, Minister of Communications, is the 
one to see first." 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 107 

One after another stood aside for the project to go 
forward — a form of comment on Komura's under- 
standing of China which had become painful to 
Japanese. When Hsu Shih-chang, who had been 
called from Mukden to Peking, was approached, he 
made precisely the same reply, and referred the agent 
of the American banking group to the Viceroy of 
Manchuria, Hsi Liang, who, he said, was the one to 
take action, since he was the only official who could 
bring the matter to the attention of the Throne. 

Within three days the contract was signed at Muk- 
den. From the outside it looked as though there 
was a hand-in-glove confederation of Chinese and 
American schemes in these plans, with an underlying 
idea of embroiling Great Britain with Japan in Man- 
churia, for the benefit of America and China. On the 
contrary, the combination of American capital and 
British engineering was seeking an area for legitimate 
operations, guaranteed by the Portsmouth Treaty and 
many other conventions. 

They did not have everything their own way with 
China by any means. The parley with her showed 
her to be still a difficult bargainer. The Japanese had 
already once balked this enterprise in the form in 
which it first came up. But the need of signing be- 
fore the opponents of China's policy could interfere, 
could not deter Hsi Liang from haggling, despite ab- 
solute orders from Peking, which had its plans clear 
and knew what terms it wished to accept. Almost at 
the last moment he made a counter-proposal to the 
terms offered by the American banking group and 
Pauling and Company, and held the negotiations up. 
He twice sent deputies to the agent of the American 
group after submitting his counter-proposal, and com- 



108 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

plained that his terms must be accepted, because he 
had telegraphed to Peking that he had signed them. 
If the American agent did not agree immediately, he 
would forfeit his office. 

The American agent retorted that, as the Viceroy 
had changed the only conditions which the American 
agent had authority to accept, he could not sign. More- 
over, he had himself telegraphed to America his in- 
tention to sign that very day, and was in precisely the 
same predicament as the Viceroy — he, too, would 
forfeit his place if he did not sign. Both "saved face" 
in the end. 

These native officers deserved high respect for their 
efforts in behalf of China. They took no light respon- 
sibilities. Though rated by America and China as an 
unenlightened, unadvanced official of the old school, 
Hsi Liang was a man of courage and considerable 
dash — saving the violence to immemorial Mandarin 
dignity. He appreciated China's helpless situation 
and her need of American capital, of which none could 
have any fear who had no unjust designs. He ex- 
ecuted the wishes of the Peking Government in a 
manner faithful to his lights. 

China was acting with better foresight and decision 
than she had ever before displayed. What was shown, 
in her acceptance of American and British aid in a 
long-cherished scheme for a northern railway, to be 
China's unprecedented avidity in adopting modern 
measures of self-defense, confirmed the existence of 
acute Japanese and Russian pressure investing the 
Chinese Government in Manchuria. 

The project, in relative importance, was nearly 
double that of the Hukuang Loan. It was the most 
ambitious enterprise of industrial China. Its po- 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 109 

litical importance was even greater, as will be shown 
by the political retaliation provoked from Russia, 
Japan, France, and Great Britain. Europe and the 
world at once loomed up on our west as before. All 
the great powers, — Japan and Russia and their 
respective allies, — whom America had or had not 
provoked in China proper, were now challenged in 
Manchuria. 

America now saw enrolled among her antagonists 
such world figures as M. Izwolsky, the foremost diplo- 
mat of Russia, and the embattled Minister of Russia's 
maligned and disparaged Foreign Office; M. Ko- 
kovtseff, who, as Minister of Finance, was a more 
powerful officer of state than Izwolsky ; M. Koros- 
tovetz, Russian Minister at Peking, and the intrepid 
scout of Russia's second new Eastern Empire ; Prince 
Ito, perhaps the greatest Oriental since Confucius or 
Genghis ; Marquis Katsura, the premier and head of 
the "war party" in Japan; Count Komura, Minister 
of Foreign Affairs and the genius of "Greater Japan" ; 
and M. Ijuin, the glorified consul and clever Japanese 
Minister in Peking. What we had now done had 
engaged us with all the great powers, even Germany, 
though she had less at stake than the others. 

The " Kinchou-Aigun Railway" was recognized by 
these powers as an alternative scheme to that of the 
Hsin-min-tun-Fakumen project. Whereas the Hsin- 
min-tun-Fakumen project had antagonized only Japan, 
this assailed all the Manchurian allies, and the melee 
was on, greater than that over the Hukuang Loan. 

Russia and Japan appeared almost to spring to- 
gether, owing to practically identical action, which, 
however, originated from different motives. On Octo- 
ber 12, 1909, M. Ijuin, the Japanese Minister, formally 



110 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

notified China that while not intending to obstruct her 
plans, Japan would yet maintain her right to be con- 
sulted regarding projected railways in the region of 
Japan's railways in Manchuria. While not claiming 
the right to veto this railway, Japan reserved her 
decision regarding subsequent action — a diplomatic 
warning. In this way she stepped aside to allow 
Russia to come forward. 

Russia followed with similar representations re- 
garding the Russian sphere in Manchuria and Russian 
frontier interests, complaining that China had not 
consulted Russia in the matter. The final blows of 
this trip-hammer-like opposition were felt by stagger- 
ing China when the respective allies of these powers, 
Great Britain and France, sent their representatives 
in February to make "friendly" representations, 
"advising" China not to proceed with the Kinchou- 
Aigun Railway without considering the wishes of 
Russia and Japan. 

The difficulties of having her own state policy, and 
of taking vital action in her own behalf, which these 
great powers had so often urged upon her, were now 
illustrated by them by smashing blows in the face. 

Japan, who was only resting on her ever-ready arms, 
was instantly on her feet and in the arena. Ito, now 
a prince, had officially forgotten the agreement with 
Harriman, and had become as faithful a servant of 
Japanese expansion as he had been a loyal opponent 
of it. Simultaneously with the signature of the 
Kinchou-Aigun contract, he became the imperial en- 
voy to meet M. Kokovtseff, Russian Minister of 
Finance, to discuss at Harbin the intentions of America, 
and to prevent neutralization plans for Manchuria, 
and reach a broader mutual understanding with 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 111 

Russia — an object which Japan had indefatigably 
pursued ever since Komura had returned from Ports- 
mouth. 

Russia, who in 1906 had sounded the prospects of 
selling her Chinese Eastern Railway, and in 1908 a 
second time had opened negotiations in New York for 
disposing of it, had for four months in Wall Street 
been offering it for sale. Kokovtseff was the pro- 
moter of this activity, and Russia was therefore ready 
for any proposition respecting her railway in Man- 
churia and her interests there. On October 26, 1909, 
Kokovtseff was at Harbin to receive the proposals of 
Ito when a Korean assassin murdered the latter on 
the platform of the railway station before any under- 
standing was possible. A grewsome note was thus 
struck by that strange race, the Koreans, who were 
themselves darkly opposing Japanese advance on the 
continent. 

Japan, Russia, Great Britain, and France had now 
placed themselves against the joint Chinese, Ameri- 
can, and British railway enterprise, and China, over- 
awed, was looking for some miraculous escape from her 
dilemma. 

The Department of State was in better working 
order at this time, being aware of its opportunities, 
keenly alive to American interests and to the impor- 
tance of doing everything to avert future wars in 
China. It was busily engaged in keeping up with 
American enterprise, and, aware of many of the ob- 
stacles which the American banking group would en- 
counter in its railway project, it laid out the tour de 
force of its diplomatic plan. 

The preliminary agreement for the Kinchou-Aigun 
Railway, signed October 2, 1909, officially remained a 



112 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

secret. But on the basis of this agreement, together 
with the proposals of Russia to sell her railways, the 
restlessness of Japan in connection with the matter, 
the Ito-Harriman agreement, the anxiety of China, 
who herself had proposed to purchase the railways in 
Manchuria, and other facts and circumstances, the 
American Government, just before Christmas, 1909, 
formally proposed in terms to the great powers the 
neutralization of all Manchurian railways by pur- 
chase and restoration to China, the purchase to be 
carried out by means of a loan subscribed by the 
powers. 

This grand conclusion of America's plan contem- 
plated the largest financial transaction in China since 
the levying of the Boxer indemnity of three hundred 
and thirty -four million dollars. It was the biggest 
political proposition in East Asia since Japan's late re- 
duction of Russia's eastern or Manchurian empire. 
It more or less defined the whole idea of the American 
Government as to what was then necessary in order to 
safeguard the Open Door and integrity of China, to 
which the powers all had subscribed. It met the 
fighting struggle for life of China's foreign policy, and 
her awakening efforts at self-help. 

The idea was so brilliant that it dazzled the powers, 
especially Japan and Russia, who thought it the mask 
of some deeper scheme. It completed Secretary of 
State Knox's diplomatic plan which he explained 
January 6, 1910, when he announced: "The proposi- 
tion of the United States to the interested powers, 
looking to the neutralization of the Manchurian rail- 
roads, discloses the end toward which American policy 
in the far East has been recently directed." 

Our proposals were characterized by expediency, 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 113 

safety, economy, and humanity. They were wise, 
practical, statesmanlike, and timely. They were 
original as an economic measure for the cure of political 
diseases, and so exactly suited to draw out and de- 
termine the trend and blend of international influ- 
ences, the strength and dimensions of alliances, the 
direction of international ties in East Asia, the rela- 
tive strength of Asiatic and European opposition to 
the Open Door, the possibilities of our Euro-Asiatic 
problem in the Pacific, and world forces present on our 
western frontier, that perhaps no better means could 
have been employed had that been our purpose. Their 
effect was that of showing clearly all the opponents 
and all the opposition to the principles to which we 
were committed in East Asia, and upon which de- 
pended the welfare of American interests in China. 

On January 5, 1910, the proposal became public. 
The governments to whom it was addressed then re- 
plied. Great Britain and France, being allies of the 
Manchurian powers, Japan and Russia, and having 
no right of interference, agreed with the proposal in 
principle, and at once intimated that political and 
other obstacles must be taken into consideration be- 
fore aid could be rendered to make it effective. Ger- 
many, though friendly, enacted the part of caution and 
replied in a similar manner. 

Followed blow upon blow. Britain not only refused 
to join in promoting the neutralization plan, but later 
refused to support China in sanctioning the Kinchou- 
Aigun Railway contract. On the contrary, it was 
opposed. Sir Edward Grey, Secretary for Foreign 
Affairs, when appealed to in behalf of these efforts in 
the interest of the Open Door, to which his country 
was pledged, said regretfully: "I can do nothing." 



114 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Count Hayashi, late Minister of Foreign Affairs of 
Japan, characterized the American proposal as a scheme 
for confiscating Japanese interests in Manchuria. Vis- 
count Aoki, the venerable ex-Ambassador to Washing- 
ton, shrewdly observed that our proposal was "a case 
of the guest preparing the bill without consulting the 
hotel-keeper." (Our interests in the region antedated 
those of Japan by many years.) This was because 
America had not consulted Japan beforehand. Baron 
Goto, Minister of Communications, said the proposal 
was "nothing new", an observation that referred to 
the Ito-Harriman agreement and later proposals from 
Russia, China, America, and other quarters. He 
added that it would be unpatriotic for Japan to accept 
it. These were the same words with which the war 
cabinet of Japan, when it had adopted its plan of 
expansion on the continent, had disposed of the Ito- 
Harriman agreement after Komura's return from 
Portsmouth. 

The Japanese press and many government officials 
cried patriotism, and invoked the shades of the thou- 
sands of Japanese heroes who had given up their lives 
on Manchurian battlegrounds. Japanese expansion- 
ists, doubtless totally ignorant of the origins of the 
proposal, were outraged and behaved like caged 
tigers. Japan virtually answered America that it 
was for the South Manchurian Railway, — which, by 
the way, under the signature of Ito, Katsura, Inouye, 
and others, she had agreed to negotiate for cash, — 
that Japanese blood and treasure had been expended. 
Secretary of State Knox, replying to this, said lacon- 
ically, that he "had always understood it was to 
punish Russia for closing the Open Door." 

M. Korostovetz, Russian Minister in Peking, dis- 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 115 

closed Russia's perturbation by the inquiries : "What 
is America's whole policy?" "How far will America 
go?" It was not entirely clear to each individual 
nation affected what were the whole grounds on 
which we had acted. Russia feared Japan, and could 
not tie to America, who offered no explanation, gave 
no security, and therefore, as she thought, deserved no 
confidence. She feared, in fact, that this was only an- 
other emanation from the "Mukden cabinet." The 
final Russian touch in destructive criticism came from 
Russia's press when it characterized the proposal as 
"a fantastic project of the imagination of promoters 
and contractors" — language referring to the dash- 
ing American banking group and the insurgent Brit- 
ish contractors, Pauling and Company. Russia had 
not been able to sell to Harriman because the man had 
died, nor to another buyer because she had not pre- 
viously found one. 

European financiers, who had accepted the spirit of 
fair play enforced in China proper by the Hukuang 
Loan denouement, and were anxious to keep commerce 
as clear of diplomacy and politics as possible, were 
prepared to support a plan so disinterested, and went 
so far as to say that Secretary Knox had laid out the 
way which development in China must follow. 

The anti-Japanese press in Great Britain approved 
the proposal, and many Britons who had lamented 
the destructive effect of the Anglo-Japanese alliance 
upon Great Britain's integrity regarding equal oppor- 
tunity in China shared the view of a leading paper 
that x\merica was "the only Western country able to 
look China in the face without the blush of shame." 

The best foreign sense was just the opposite of that 
at home, where "muck-raking" journalism and a hatred 



116 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

of the "money power", expressed in such terms as 
" dollar diplomacy ", were leading the public to a 
political campaign waged on the issue of the trust 
and corporation evil. And it then was played by the 
organized and subsidized Japanese propagandists and 
their American clients, among whom it is easy to win 
sympathy against "Wall Street." What was taking 
place was the live, fiery substance of future Pacific 
history-making events, molten in the crucible and 
waiting for the shock that must give it shape. 

The heat of these frictions could not cool with the 
important results that followed. Japan and Russia 
were yet to deliver their replies, which it was evident 
would be cast by Japan. And by this time there was 
not much doubt as to what they would be. 

On January 20, 1910, Japan informally notified 
China that Japan and Russia would concertedly decline 
the American proposal. China's participation in this 
measure, she said, was in the nature of an unfriendly 
act toward Japan. One of the lesser secretaries of the 
Japanese Legation in Peking was the bearer of these 
important representations, a slight at which the Chinese 
were much humiliated. In their embarrassment and 
fear, they were at first disposed to reproach the United 
States for what seemed to them to promise no ad- 
vantageous outcome. Sdeath ! had we not signed 
the Root-Takahira agreement in her absence and 
now done this thing that concerned her more than 
any one, lone-handed? 

Considering the array of forces against them, how- 
ever, China's ministers continued to exhibit both 
courage and purpose, and stood by their infant foreign 
policy as well as by America's plans and efforts. They 
awaited America's next move, which did not transpire. 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 117 

Further information from the American Government 
was also lacking. Unfortunately, it had nothing to 
give. Moreover, an embarrassing discovery was made. 
Russia and Japan, supported by their allies, had 
severely scrutinized the action of America in seeking 
the neutralization of their railways by restoration to 
China. Especially after the obvious failure of the 
proposal, they made the most of its defects. Among 
other things they noted that America, an outside power, 
lacking established railway interests which alone could 
give her an equal voice in railway questions in Man- 
churia, and lacking any share in their own railway 
holdings, had held them up to the world in a scheme 
for the disposal of those holdings. They noted that 
the preliminary contract for the Kinchou-Aigun Rail- 
way, which was America's claim to railway interests 
which she had to offer in the scheme of neutralization, 
was an incomplete document, in that it had not been 
specifically ratified by the Chinese Throne. This was 
true ; it had been ratified only as a part of an omnibus 
scheme for general Manchurian development, and 
without specific ratification, such agreements in China 
have never been held to be valid. Upon the validity 
of this agreement, America's entry in a physical capac- 
ity into Manchuria, giving her a right to consideration, 
rested. 

As a matter of fact, the American Government had 
been misinformed. It was under the impression, when 
the Knox proposal was made, that the provisional con- 
tract had been ratified by the Chinese Government. 
The Manchurian allies had marshaled their whole 
opposition to prevent China carrying the Kinchou- 
Aigun plan further. Came another sharp fight. Brit- 
ain, endeavoring to restrain Pauling and Company, 



118 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

opposed its ratification on her own behalf and that of 
Japan, for the quietude of Manchuria at all costs. 
The whole burden of our "plan of state" now bore upon 
this point. The responsibility of overcoming opposi- 
tion devolved upon Mr. Fletcher, our Charge at Pe- 
king, who had carried through the Peking end of the 
Hukuang Loan diplomacy by which America had 
gotten into China proper. China had acquiesced in 
America's plans, but now that they had been repulsed, 
China was unwilling further to risk displeasure from 
the powerful Manchurian allies. Fletcher, however, 
convinced China that imperial sanction to the Kin- 
chou-Aigun contract was as necessary to China's 
integrity and dignity in the matter as to America's 
position, and on January 21, 1910, despite nearly in- 
vincible discouragement of the Manchurian allies, 
China issued the necessary rescript of ratification. Thus 
America was saved from a moiety of her awkwardness. 

On January 22, 1910, upon the heels of this rescript, 
and in accordance with representations made two days 
before by both Japan and Russia, these two powers 
formally rejected America's proposal. Our efforts in 
common interests, equal opportunity, and the Open 
Door had vitally failed in the most important theater 
of international conflict in China. 

Seldom, in Peking, had there been such perturba- 
tion in our affairs. We were aghast. China was 
aghast. Liang Tun-yen, the principal officer of the 
Foreign Office, asked what we were doing. What 
could we say ? China had seen the plan and approved 
it, as had Tong Shao-yi a similar proposal in Wash- 
ington in 1908. But she had no connection with its 
diplomacy. We left the greatest factors out of con- 
sideration. Russia's cooperation was the one essen- 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 119 

tial, and all signs promised it. At St. Petersburg was 
Ambassador Rockhill, considered by John Hay our 
greatest diplomat, next to Henry White, and by far 
the best American statesman in Asiatic affairs. Knox 
ignored them both. One reason, there was no co- 
ordination among our forces, — between our bankers 
and State Department and with China, — however 
blamed they were for conspiracy against Japan. The 
State Department apparently didn't know what 
Kokovtseff's relations with Harriman and Noetzlin 
had been, and that he had recommended the sale of 
the Chinese Eastern Railway on his return from 
Harbin. If it did, it ignored the fact in its desire to 
support China in her Kinchou-Aigun Railway scheme. 
It consequently divided its proposal into two parts. 
And this was where Rockhill came in. When the two 
propositions reached St. Petersburg he saw that, as 
has been pointed out by an English writer (Mr. J. 
O. P. Bland), they formed "a diplomatic gaffe." They 
offered Russia two things in Manchuria : either neu- 
tralization of existing railways, or international co- 
operation in China's proposed railway. There was in 
this an apparent implication that Russia and Japan 
were violating the Portsmouth Treaty in that, as the 
two things were placed in the same category, failure to 
accept either one or the other would be an admission 
of obstructing China in her measures to develop 
commerce and industry in Manchuria. 

Having no instructions to the contrary, Rockhill, 
seeing the pitfall, used his discretion and first presented 
only the Russian and Japanese railways feature of the 
scheme. It was presented as a whole in London, Paris, 
Berlin, and Tokio, however, and when Russia learned 
this, she sent orders for inquiries to be made as to 



120 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

what our whole aim was. But as there was nothing 
to say, all the Manchurian allies were mystified, and 
the proposal lost weight. 

We failed on the same count as in the Root-Takahira 
agreement, and as in that, we ended in playing the 
other fellow's game. But we didn't know what had 
killed the Ito-Harriman plan, and why it was we 
couldn't take Japan's continued pre-Komura consent 
and Russia's continued performance of trying to sell 
out, for granted. Our intervention in Manchuria 
confirmed the fact that we no longer had any exclu- 
sively Asiatic problems, that all problems in the 
Pacific area were world problems, and that we had 
been dealing throughout with the confederacy of Eu- 
rope and Asia. But we were nevertheless producing 
epoch-making results. American enterprise, inaugu- 
rated by Harriman, Schiff, and others, and American 
diplomacy, promoted by President Taft and Secretary 
of State Knox, achieved definite results. 

First : The effects of the invasion of the Hukuang 
Loan by America freed France from the obligations of 
a financial agreement of 1903 with Great Britain, 
whereby her participation in enterprises in the Yangtse 
Valley, Great Britain's sphere, was a concession from 
Great Britain in return for participation in the French 
sphere, and made her an independent competitor. 
France, Germany, and America were established in 
the Yangtse Valley and throughout China proper on 
the basis of equal opportunity. German, Russian, 
Japanese, and all other competition was legitima- 
tized. 

Second: America's action secured for her a commer- 
cial and political position in Manchuria under the 
policy of equal opportunity and the Open Door on 



SECOND LINE OF DEFENSE 121 

the basis of physical interests similar to that obtained 
in China proper. 

Third : It confirmed in the minds of the rulers in 
Peking the possibilities of a foreign policy for China 
and the dependable support of the American Govern- 
ment. 

Fourth : It cleared up, to a large extent, the situ- 
ation growing out of the Russian-Japanese War by dis- 
covering the true positions of Japan and Russia in 
Manchuria, and to an extent uncovered their plans so 
that the world knows where the Manchurian allies and 
all the other powers stand. 

Fifth : It furthermore showed that America and 
China were bound together more or less by the same 
considerations which had previously bound America to 
Japan : first, by common recognition of the neces- 
sity to China of independence, integrity of territory 
arid jurisdiction, and freedom of development in trade, 
to the promotion of which America is committed ; 
and second, by reason of common rewards and re- 
buffs sustained in defense of the interests of both coun- 
tries. America in two years had completed her formal 
entry into China according to conditions established 
and recognized by the powers. Her action supplied 
the desired basis for equality of American commerce 
and trade and the influence of American institutions 
in East Asia. 

Sixth : It gave foreign affairs in their largest sense 
to the American people by showing them to be, by 
tradition, principle, precedent, training, inclination, 
and policy, in direct opposition to the Empire of 
Japan which they introduced to the world, and to 
whose people and interests they ever had been friendly 
and protective. 



CHAPTER VII 
Third Line of Defense 

The situation of China has often been described. 
But it never has been so illuminated as by the glare 
which the spotlight action of the Government at Wash- 
ington was throwing over it. The revelations were 
disheartening. China was prevented by the Man- 
churian allies from taking measures protective of the 
rights of all the treaty nations and preservative of 
Manchuria, as well as Mongolia, to China. 

But notwithstanding the opposition, under Japanese 
leadership, America kept on with her enlightening 
work, using her own peaceful implements of financial 
and industrial enterprise as against politics and arms. 
She was blundering in the dark, but as long as she was 
striking fire it was worth while keeping up her leap. 
Taking a lesson from the revelations in Manchuria 
which it had caused, the State Department turned 
its hands (and feet) to the improvement of certain 
things of China in general, the benefits of which would 
be common to all and which the most recent treaties 
of all the great powers with China had stipulated as 
an obligation placed upon China to carry out. 

As expressed in the American-Chinese commercial 
treaty of October 2, 1902, furnishing the basis for 
what the Government and capitalists of America 
were about to do, China agreed to adopt a uniform 

122 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 123 

currency to improve trade. China's modern develop- 
ment turned on the question of currency. Upon 
currency depended the growth of China's credit. 
With nearly all her natural resources undeveloped, 
China's greatest need was money, and this need was 
made acute by the imperative necessity of reform, as 
shown by the situation which American action had 
uncovered. China was potentially wealthy, but its 
Government, especially since the Boxer War, had been 
practically penniless and insolvent. It was regarded 
as a question only of time until China would be bank- 
rupt. In such a case, on account of her debt to Europe, 
ever increasing, she would have to surrender her finances 
to the management of a board of control of European 
financiers, representing the capitalistic countries of 
Great Britain, France, and Germany. 

Special policies for China's protection and safety 
such as are embraced in the Open Door doctrine, 
would be endangered by this, and if America relapsed 
into traditional disinterestedness, the forces threaten- 
ing to break up China would operate in spite of the 
Open Door doctrine. Neither financial control nor 
the break-up of China was wanted by the great powers. 
But the only visible chance of averting these calamities 
seemed to lie in America's anticipating the capitalistic 
powers of Europe in this by an effort to unite all 
foreign financial and commercial interests on lines of 
mutual advantage and welfare. The reform of China's 
currency, in order to bring about industrial develop- 
ment and trade improvement, involved the creation 
of financial order. This called for reform in govern- 
ment administration, which required money. The 
survival of China depended on China's having money 
at once and properly managing it. 



124 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

This was the primer of Pacific politics when the 
World War was germinating. America was fore- 
armed for the undertaking presented by this oppor- 
tunity. In September, 1903, President Roosevelt had 
sent Jeremiah W. Jenks, as a special commissioner, 
to confer with the Chinese Government regarding the 
introduction of the gold standard into China. China 
was approachable, but obdurate. Since John Hay, 
three years before, had arrested partition of China 
by establishing among the powers the doctrine of the 
Open Door, China had carried on a dramatic struggle 
of peculiar Oriental economic and political strategy 
against the modern science of money and commerce — 
a set fight with the money power of Europe. She 
then began her own efforts at financial reform, but 
every detail of her struggle was without success. She 
ignored the currency, and in 1906 founded the Board 
of Revenue Bank. According to her views, she was 
now prepared to finance her own loans, but was with- 
out money, collateral, or national credit. Wrongly 
directed, her efforts to raise loans and reform finance 
were bound to fail, and a procession of the foremost 
officials surrendered the presidency of the Board of 
Revenue, one after another. The Empress Dowager 
approved a stamp tax, devised by Yuan Shih-k'ai, 
but rescinded it the day following, out of fear that an 
attempt to enforce it would excite disorder. 

Advanced Chinese saw that nothing was being ac- 
complished, and in 1908 the Empress Dowager sup- 
ported the policy of affiliation with America, inau- 
gurated by the sending of Tong Shao-yi to Washington 
to present China's thanks for the remission of the 
Boxer indemnity, and to get loans. The formation 
of this mission was accompanied by the adoption of a 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 125 

silver standard and uniform coinage. All shared the 
fiasco of the mission. 

Strange to say, China's credit steadily rose, owing 
to European competition for interests in China, 
accelerated by American effort to get firmly established 
in China's industrial development. At the same time 
it further alarmed the foreign bankers. Foreign 
governments became anxious over the doubt raised 
by them as to China's solvency, and China became 
alarmed about her own safety on account of the influ- 
ence in the country of European finance, which had 
become the instrument of foreign power, formerly 
wielded through "spheres of influence" agreements. 
"Spheres of influence" had changed to "financial 
spheres", geographically defined. China needed no 
hint from non-capitalistic powers like Japan, and 
even Russia, to apprise her of this. 

China became highly agitated, and in December, 
1908, the "National Debt Association" was formed 
by Chinese at Tientsin to pay off China's debt to 
predatory Europe and save the country. This plan 
to save China from insolvency attracted foreign atten- 
tion, as showing China's intellectual bankruptcy : 
she had no financial experts. It enlisted universal 
support. The Government, which was looking for 
a miracle to save it from default, indorsed the scheme ; 
it was approved by the Prince Regent, and by thirty- 
two native chambers of commerce, collected consider- 
able funds, and collapsed. 

Sir John Jordan, British Minister at Peking, speak- 
ing for Europe, assured China that the powers were 
not intending to assume control of the finances, but 
cautioned her to devise fiscal remedies. Foreign 
financiers were justly apprehensive and tendered anx- 



126 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

ious counsel. British, French, and German bankers 
affiliated for mutual protection, and to withstand the 
crisis. 

In 1909, failure reached full headway. A report 
that the powers were about to take over China's 
finances and partition the Empire swept the provinces. 
Viceroys and governors, fearing the Manchu Throne 
had been suddenly overawed by the foreign legations, 
telegraphed to inquire of the Government what had 
happened. Suspecting another Japanese political trick, 
with the possible connivance of the other non-capi- 
talistic country, Russia, China telegraphed its minis- 
ters abroad to trace the origin of the report. British 
interests came forward with a proposal for a British 
financial adviser from the Indian service, and China 
was obliged to deny to several nations any intention 
of engaging such an adviser. 

China's alarm about herself was followed by fear 
of the consequences of foreign alarm, to satisfy which 
she attempted to devise a budget. Duke Tsai Tseh, 
Minister of Finance, unable to audit or control ex- 
penditures, resigned. The Throne refused his resigna- 
tion, and then came the most desperate and futile 
measures of all. First, in defense against affiliated 
foreign finance and increasing want, China addressed 
the powers, asking for an increase of her customs 
rate on imports, which had been one of the issues 
with Europe and the world delegated to Tong Shao-yi. 
Although she prepared to abolish internal restrictions 
on trade, she was unprepared to reform the currency, 
also required by treaty, so that the powers were pre- 
cluded from agreeing to increased duties. 

China then, on November 13, 1909, tried to reimpose 
the stamp tax with stamps expensively made in 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 127 

America, and which had lain unused at least two years 
in the Board of Revenue at Peking. But popular 
opposition, and the veto of fifteen of the nineteen 
provinces, prevented its execution. She made a 
futile attempt to force a domestic loan by distributing 
the bonds pro rata to her officials. Nothing happened. 
Viceroys and governors ignored the call for financial 
reports. Recreant, they refused to be coerced, and 
the Board of Revenue had to send commissioners 
to make provincial investigations. These were op- 
posed. Duke Tsai Tseh denounced many provincial 
authorities and impeached the treasurers of six prov- 
inces. He issued modernized banking laws, and 
undertook correction of the unauthorized issue of 
about ten million dollars' worth of paper currency in 
the Yangtse Valley, to which for a year the foreign 
ministers had been calling China's attention, and 
which had become an obstacle to commerce. 

By December, 1909, the Board of Revenue was in 
a state of collapse, overwhelmed with suggestions 
from all over the Empire, culminating in 1910 in sweep- 
ing recommendations by the two foremost viceroys, 
who urged the borrowing of millions, the building of 
trunk line railways in all directions within the coming 
decade, and the carrying out of the nine years' reforma- 
tion, that had been proclaimed by the Empress Dow- 
ager, otherwise China would default. The success 
of railways in the development of America was given 
in support of this recommendation. 

Europe and its Asiatic ally, Japan, had brought 
China to something of a nervous breakdown. Her 
situation was a matter of the 'greatest consequence 
to us. We had always recognized a pathological 
tie with the greatest detached body of the human 



128 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

race, that confronted us on half our frontiers, and we 
could not remain insensible to its demoralization by 
outside forces, nor hold aloof from efforts to control 
them. The future of the Chinese race, closely allied 
with the destiny of society in America, was a fact 
burned into us by the exclusion question and other 
questions. There was a strongly expressed desire 
in this country that China should triumph in modern 
civilization and government, and extend her match- 
less social and human experiment continuous from the 
remotest times, unbroken — be a pillar of the earth 
rather than a lost world pouring out of her floodgates 
upon nations like our own. While we were attempting 
to forestall the lightnings and the storm, China was 
shocked by more political developments. On July 4, 
1910, as a result of the startling diplomacy of America 
for two years, especially that looking to the neutraliza- 
tion of railways in Manchuria, Japan secured the 
signature of Russia to an arrangement excluding out- 
side interference in Manchuria. Later came Japan's 
annexation of Korea and subsequent renewed encroach- 
ments in Manchuria, which long before had superseded 
the Yellow River as "China's sorrow." On September 
20, 1910, under the great light from without that now 
beat upon China, Duke Tsai Tseh, in an audience 
with the Prince Regent in the Forbidden City, con- 
fessed the default of all efforts and plans for financial 
reform, and asked help in effecting reorganization of 
the Imperial finances, otherwise he must resign. 

Everything showed how timely was China's struggle 
and how urgent was our aid. China was face to face 
with the powers. In 1902, she had covenanted with 
them to reform her currency and failed to do so. In 
1906, she adopted a nine years' program of reform and 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 129 

started out to be a great power, without any banking 
or fiscal system, without finance, without a real cur- 
rency, and practically without a national income. 
For three years, she had her ministers abroad and 
others feverishly working on financial reform, espe- 
cially her Minister in Washington, Chang Yin-tang, 
who held half a dozen conferences with Jeremiah W. 
Jenks. But in 1910, without having remedied any 
of these fundamental defects, she faced her first reform 
crisis, that of foreign intervention in her finances. 

Chang Yin-tang received secret orders to suspend 
his investigations. China had been visited by over- 
whelming recognition of defeat in a lone effort to create 
a currency and fiscal system. She was practically 
helpless before the European capitalistic allies, as 
in 1900 she was helpless before the military allies. 
It had taken the capitalistic powers of the world, — 
Great Britain, France, Germany, and America, — 
just two years to get together and determine China's 
financial future. She could not longer delay an appeal 
for neutral outside aid. Though politically wayward, 
she measurably appreciated the movement against 
her, and on September 20, 1910, following Duke Tsai 
Tseh's disclosures, the Prince Regent, with no alterna- 
tive, afraid of default and of foreign intervention, and 
in view of the jeopardy of all reform, approved a reform 
loan, if it could be obtained from America, as was in- 
tended in 1908, and according to plans worked out 
by the aid of Chen Chin-tao, a graduate of the Uni- 
versity of California. 

In her struggle with Western finance, and the Euro- 
pean-Asian alliance, China capitulated, throwing her- 
self into our arms to escape. Her question had been 
variously defined as foreign sciences, arms, foreign 



130 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

governmental methods, diplomacy, foreign religions, 
etc. But necessity determined it to be finance, and 
economists held that if China did not reform her 
finances, she was lost. 

Could America again save China from foreign 
domination and disruption by bringing about for 
her the creation of a system of finance? At the end 
of a decade of the Open Door doctrine, after the 
failure of the neutralization proposal in Manchuria, 
this was the foremost question of the American 
State Department. From its standpoint, it was a 
question whether America might accomplish by the 
instrumentality of a currency loan what, in 1899 
and 1900, she had accomplished by the Open Door 
conventions. 

On September 22, 1910, Sheng Hsuan-hwai, Vice 
President of the Board of Communications, called on 
the American Minister at Peking, William J. Calhoun, 
successor to William Woodville Rockhill, and on the 
authority of China asked him to telegraph to Wash- 
ington a request for a currency loan and an American 
financial adviser. 

Two generations of the powers had waited in vain 
such an event. A loan of fifty million dollars was 
conditionally agreed upon. On October 27, 1910, a 
preliminary agreement was quickly signed in Peking. 
On October 29, an edict ratified it, and China was 
committed to the reform of her currency as provided 
in her treaty, and to employing an American adviser 
to carry it out. 

But although generations had awaited the event, 
China's action, as usual, was a signal among the 
European-Asian powers for another fight. It was a 
question with them, especially Japan, after the neu- 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 131 

tralization proposal of 1909-1910 was disposed of, 
as to where America would turn up next in China. 
This, then, was her reappearance, and it was not less 
surprising than had been America's diplomacy of the 
year before. It was of more immediate importance 
because it concerned China's credit. Moreover, the 
introduction of foreign advisers into China long had 
been the jealous enterprise of many a Western nation, 
and in this America appeared to have beaten them 
all. Since the Hukuang Loan affair, the European 
groups were reconciled to America having due consid- 
eration in China, but they had grown apprehensive 
of American leadership, and were opposed to America's 
special position, not to say what they called "American 
methods." Japan was now the political leader in 
East Asia of her Manchurian allies, Great Britain, 
France, and Russia, and was the obvious political 
successor there of the United States. 

The European groups scrutinized this situation, 
and then invited the American group to join them, 
accept their leadership, and avoid contention. The 
group had once before declined a similar proposal, 
saying it preferred to continue singly in China's finan- 
cial field, but reconsidered, and adopted the view that 
the cooperation of the powers was essential to the 
success of loans and of currency reform. It invited 
the European groups to a meeting in Paris, where, 
November 10, 1910, the previous overtures from the 
groups for a four-party agreement for equal participa- 
tion in future loans was signed. The present or cur- 
rency loan was specially excepted from the body of 
the agreement, but in the minutes of the meeting, the 
American group agreed to European participation, 
conditional upon China's consent, and stipulations 



132 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

were imposed, leaving the conduct of all negotiations 
for the loan to the Americans. 

At this stage of American intervention in East 
Asia, our side had ample experience in its dangers, un- 
certainties, and risks. Their aim was to improve the 
situation in China and obviate disorganization in 
the Pacific, destruction, war, and loss. They were 
perfectly aware that their actions laid down the lines 
of another controversy that would arouse the jeal- 
ousies and antagonism of the powers, especially those 
which, like Russia and Japan, had benefited most by 
conditions in the past and would prefer the gains as- 
sured by a continuation of these conditions. But 
that was not a consideration to deter them. 

The new compact held out to the European groups 
the possibility of their participation in a loan which 
China had granted solely to America, and was con- 
ciliatory. It defined the fundamentally different posi- 
tions, as well as the essentially different functions of 
the American Government and the American bankers 
from those of Europe or Japan, and in itself was 
an assurance of non-political and neutral effort for 
mutual welfare. With these advantages evident to 
the powers, the fight began. 

Bankers can unite, and the American and European 
groups, in order to forestall Chinese diplomatic tactics, 
quickly did so before the negotiations began. Gov- 
ernments find such a course impossible in the same 
degree in China, where they have always emphasized 
their political aims, and have been played by her, one 
against another. The Government at Washington, 
obliged to act alone, confined its activity to an effort 
to secure the appointment at once of an American 
adviser. Its course was taken from our traditional 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 133 

policy, and was based on considerations of equality 
for all, including China herself. It hoped that inter- 
national capital would find its way into the loan, and 
it deferred to the view of the American group that 
currency reform in China, to be successful, must have 
the cooperation of the powers. But comprehending 
the inevitable increase of foreign financial influence 
in China, fully appreciated by China also, our Govern- 
ment desired an American adviser independent of 
foreign financial influence. 

Had the advisership come to America independent 
of the loan, our Government might have been able to 
have consummated its desire. But as the European 
groups were now involved, our Government agreed 
that no adviser would be chosen without consultation 
with the American group which had the interest of 
the European groups in trust. 

China wanted to involve America singly, in some 
manner, so that her influence would be a dependable 
foil to aggressive nations. She was working for a 
precedent that would give her a loophole to independ- 
ence. Her object was twofold. She desired freedom 
from supervision by the powers. But respecting 
money she wanted to escape responsibility for the 
manner of disbursement and management. Her tra- 
ditional irresponsibility in this had made it impossible 
for her to borrow money at home or abroad without 
a foreign auditor to take care of it. She was going 
to break this rule if she could. Contrarily, our people 
took means to elude her in this, and by involving 
Europeans, guarantee success with harmony and 
safety. 

But the effect of the action of the American group 
in taking in the Europeans was to unavoidably under- 



134 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

mine our Government's position respecting the ad- 
visership. The Chinese saw this, and stored it away 
for future use. 

The European groups saw that equality in the loan, 
which had been given them, implied a joint adviser- 
ship, but having received, as it were, a gift horse, they 
could not at the moment look it in the mouth. They 
could not then contest with America her reservation 
of an exclusive adviser. 

The task of the American Government was to secure 
from China, without outside interference, the Ameri- 
can advisership, as China had desired. The task of 
the American group was to persuade China to admit 
the European groups to the loan, thereby preventing 
competition on the loan terms. The scene of action, 
which had been temporarily transferred to Paris, was 
shifted back to Peking. 

To the Western world, China is the battleground 
of nations, where the strong, aggressive, and needy 
struggle for trade and territory. It had been the 
bitterest international gridiron in East Asia, since the 
days of Seoul under the Japanese and Russians, and 
what political peace and order it had enjoyed were 
only due to the operation of the principles of the Open 
Door doctrine. Peking, though larger than Seoul, 
had not been less petty, murderous, and bloody. But 
in meanness, and in the size of its international trage- 
dies, it had rivaled every Asiatic capital from Yokohama 
Bay to the Sea of Marmora. It had outdone Canton, 
the first seat of its international relations, in wretched- 
ness of its contentions. But the influence of the 
Hay doctrine, cooperated in by the powers, had tended 
more and more to the elevation of foreign and Chinese 
diplomacy there, and had developed the latent states- 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 135 

manship of some of China's naturally able officials. 
In those circumstances, it was thought that capital, 
which had at last invested this battleground, might 
be able, by industrial development and reform, to 
solve problems that diplomacy had so far failed in. 

China also understood this, and having obtained 
the preliminary currency loan agreement, apprehensive 
of further failures in finance, desired prompt action 
and called upon America to proceed with the loan, 
stating she was ready to telegraph her views as to 
terms. 

Washington was on the defensive, and retorted 
that the next step was not the conclusion of details, 
but the confirmation in writing by China of her request 
for the American adviser. It stated that in consider- 
ation of China's desires, the American financiers were 
sending a special representative (Mr. Willard Straight), 
authorized to take up all financial contentions, but 
as for other matters, they could be concluded immedi- 
ately through diplomatic channels, and China was 
asked, straight out, to name the adviser. 

China demurred. She had never had an active 
adviser, such as the present plan provided. She had 
nullified the influence of those advisers she had em- 
ployed for various services in the past. China evi- 
dently had not intended a directing adviser, and not 
at all such an adviser as America had just provided, 
for example, for Persia, in the person of Mr. Morgan 
Shuster. 

But something had happened in Peking. About 
November 15, France informally told China that she 
maintained the right of participation in the proposed 
loan, and joint advisership in case advisers were 
appointed. Japan and Russia came forward, and 



136 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

while they did not impose direct opposition to the 
application of the loan to Manchuria, yet affirmed 
right of equality, and required of China an explana- 
tion of the objects of the loan in application to Man- 
churia, acts strictly in accord with diplomatic practice 
in Peking, and totally disconcerting to China's inten- 
tions. They prevented her ever confirming her request 
to America for an adviser. Although the . European 
groups had a right to expect participation in the loan, 
America stuck to her understanding with China, and, 
before November 29, had twice urged her to confirm 
her request, and Minister Calhoun was prepared to 
urge yet more strongly. 

It is to the credit of the official alertness of Japan 
and Russia, as well as France, that they acted in Peking 
before China had time to name an adviser. Yet they 
were but doing their part in the work of Europe and Asia 
upon our frontiers, the complications and mutations 
of which revealed more of the possibilities to us of the 
alliance which those powers had made in the Pacific. 

The American group agent reached Peking and 
opened the loan terms negotiations, proposing to China 
the participation of the Europeans. China had not 
intended this, no more than a controversy with Europe 
over an advisership. Here were two undesirable 
propositions from two sources, each one of which gave 
her an excuse for deferring action on the other, pend- 
ing the reconciliation of the discrepancies between 
them by the American Government and the American 
group. 

It is always necessary for China, ground as she is 
between the millstones of the powers, to act slowly, 
lest she find herself reduced to political dust only. 
She watched the effect of America's insistence and the 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 137 

demonstrations of Russia and Japan on one hand, and 
the European groups and governments on the other, 
and awaited the outcome. The Europeans sought 
to come into the negotiations, thinking they might 
have an opportunity to take the loan away from the 
Americans. But the American Minister and the 
American group agent, on instructions, refused to 
recognize them. China parleyed, and the Washington 
Government, unable to proceed against her indispo- 
sition without creating a new situation, sat down to 
take counsel. 

Two months had elapsed, China refused to act 
respecting the adviser, and Washington did not know 
whether she desired American pressure exerted against 
her so that she might have an excuse for concluding 
her obligations to America, or whether she was genu- 
inely awed by the powers. Inquiries showed that 
the currency loan was opposed by the same complica- 
tions that had afflicted the proposals respecting Man- 
churia and the Hukuang Loan. 

China could not be blamed for resisting, in view of 
the intimidation of the Manchurian allies. When 
we promised participation to the Europeans in the 
currency loan conditional upon China's consent, China 
apprehended that she was about to fall into the trap 
she had planned to avoid. International control of 
her finances had come. She had a safeguard, through 
American participation and by American government 
supervision of American finance in China, yet her 
understanding with America was threatened with 
failure. She could not play the bankers against each 
other, but she played the American Government against 
the American group. To the former, she said that 
she could not agree to the American advisership, 



138 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

because the latter urged the internationalization of 
the loan. When the latter urged the internationaliza- 
tion of the loan as the only means of success of currency 
reform, China said she could not agree, because the 
powers would not accept the American advisership. 
The infirmity of America's diplomatic position was 
recognized in Washington, and on November 28, 1910, 
when the final negotiations with China began in Peking, 
the governments of Great Britain, France, and Ger- 
many had, in a night, become tentative participants, 
and our right of the advisership was sacrificed. 

Although the European groups had agreed not to 
interfere, their governments could not be refused 
interference, and the preliminary agreement with 
China had to be shown in Washington, first to the 
British and German ambassadors, and then to the 
French. The admission of America's three capitalistic 
colleagues to the negotiations was completed. As the 
leader of the negotiations, America could urge restraint 
so as not to defeat the loan, which was the main object 
aimed at, but found it necessary to send a note to the 
three powers, assuring them not only of participation, 
but the right of signature of the final agreement. 

It is hard to imagine diplomatic topsy-turviness 
more bewildering than this. European interests were 
directed to breaking down the preference given to 
America. Their financiers proposed a board of ad- 
visers. This contravened the ideas of both America 
and China. Thereupon all other forces, capable of 
interference, concentrated in Peking like rooks. The 
real interests of the four capitalistic powers favored 
the loan. But political considerations favored the 
opposition represented by the Manchurian allies. 
There was a possibility that the apprehensions of two 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 139 

of the latter, Japan and Russia, as to the applica- 
tion of loan moneys in a Chinese-American project in 
Manchuria, would inspire in the other two, Great 
Britain and France, a disinclination to participate 
in the Manchurian section of the loan. 

Other influences arrayed themselves against China, 
America, and her capitalistic partners. These were 
the separate and peculiar interests to which Japan 
and Russia were applying themselves, and those of 
the Chinese reform and revolutionary agitators. The 
latter, at the time, had a center in the Chinese National 
Assembly, China's embryo parliament. They agi- 
tated against foreign loans. The Japanese press 
commenced a political agitation on the subject. The 
currency loan, a simple loan for mutual benefit in 
China, within a month had become a political problem. 

Practical interests determined the solution of the 
currency loan embroglio, justifying the claim made 
for America's action from the beginning that it was 
in the interests of all concerned. America succeeded 
in dividing the Manchurian allies. Great Britain, 
for the good of the currency reform cause in which 
she was deeply interested, exerted her influence upon 
Japan, her political ally, and then upon her financial 
ally, France, thus at the same time reaching Russia, 
the ally of France, expressing the hope that those 
powers would not obstruct a measure for progress. 
Japan and Russia contented themselves with leaving 
the care of their interests to Great Britain and France, 
and with China's assurances that in respect to future 
loans they would receive the same consideration as 
other powers. The way was thus left open for their 
allies, together with Germany, to come into the cur* 
rency loan. 



140 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

When China's statesmen had accepted this program, 
Duke Tsai Tseh visited the National Assembly to 
explain the beneficial nature of the loan, and quiet the 
misguided patriots from among the people. The 
responsibility for the trouble fomented among the 
Chinese agitators was laid upon the Japanese, who 
were charged by the negotiators with active intrigue 
among the members of the National Assembly to stop 
the loan. Pressure was also brought to bear upon 
Sheng Hsuan-huai, upon whose authority the loan 
agreement was to be concluded, and then upon Na 
Tung, long known as a Japanese partisan, who, on 
the last day of the negotiations, made an effort to 
embroil the negotiators and wreck the entire arrange- 
ment. But he was defeated and had to leave the 
council room. 

Although Russia's interests were regarded as lying 
in the same direction as those of Japan, Russia remained 
neutral during the contentions. When China agreed 
to European participation, and this desired object was 
guaranteed, President Taft, who had taken a great 
personal interest in the matter, and the Washington 
Government, relinquished their expectations of an 
exclusive and independent American adviser, and the 
four powers, together with China, worn cut with dis- 
couragements, reached an agreement with remarkable 
international coordination. 

On April 15, 1911, at America's solicitation, China 
signed terms for a currency loan from Great Britain, 
France, Germany, and the United States, and under- 
took, with the aid of these four capitalistic great 
contemporaries, broad measures in the form of a uni- 
form standard currency scheme looking to the material 
reconstruction of the Celestial Empire, and on June 13, 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 141 

in London, England, a financial council of these west- 
ern powers met to approve it. Of the total amount 
of the loan, fifty million dollars, five ninths were appor- 
tioned to China proper, and four ninths to Manchu- 
ria. Of the Manchurian section, about ten million 
dollars were set aside for industrial and administrative 
purposes. 

As there are but these four capitalistic great powers 
among nations, it may be said that the outer world, 
thus in fact as so often pronounced in theory, on June 
13, 1911, established itself in council to sit upon the 
future of China, and these things, directed to trade 
and industrial regeneration in China, were a realization 
of the desires of western nations from the beginning 
of trade relations in China in the sixteenth century and 
of the active aims of England, France, and America 
for about seventy-five years. 

Two centuries before America was discovered, Ma 
Tuan-lin, the Chinese, wrote the whole story of China's 
money. In the seventeenth century a successor mod- 
ernized his work. In 1910 it was still modern and 
showed that the currency mediums of China were 
tokens for exchange and not fixed weights or measures. 
No progress was made until the great powers inter- 
vened, and America, by her aid, in 1911 placed China 
among the currency reform nations of the world, as 
she had placed her upon a course of reform also respect- 
ing opium. 

This manner of ours of working in our own field, 
with our own implements, with almost no knowledge 
of diplomacy, won the nickname in our own country 
of "dollar diplomacy. " Our success was due to good 
intentions, main strength, and awkwardness, by which 
were curiously fulfilled the early promises by our presi- 



142 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

dents, of the good services of American gold, made to 
Siam, China, and Japan in connection with trade privi- 
leges. In 1904, Japan first won our gold in quantity, 
when she secured a war loan, to the chagrin of Russia. 
Our gold now went to China, to the chagrin of Japan. 

Our Government made one important concession 
in order to bring about an agreement. In deference 
to the European groups, the advisership was to be 
neutral, and China became satisfied that America 
should accompany the loan with an adviser of what- 
ever nationality she deemed expedient. The groups 
jointly named an adviser from a country not concerned 
in the loan, and his appointment was left to the Presi- 
dent, by reason of our right in the original agreement 
with China. But in foregoing the advisership, and 
what would have been a diplomatic feather, the 
American Government, after another complicated 
and at times very doubtful struggle, emerged with 
success, and with the renewed confidence of the Chinese. 
It was said that not even the remission of the Boxer 
indemnity so convinced China of the disinterested 
nature of America's motives in a practical effort to 
promote Chinese material reform, as did this concession, 
made in order to secure international harmony. 

By the currency loan, a new force was created in 
China from the four capitalistic powers of the world 
that may be called the capitalistic allies, whose inter- 
ests, based upon equality, are naturally antagonistic 
to those of special rights represented by the combina- 
tion under the name of the Manchurian allies. A move- 
ment by foreign interests had appeared that was 
more favorable to China than any existing hitherto. 
China's acceptance of the terms and conditions of 
this most important reform was attributed to the 



THIRD LINE OF DEFENSE 143 

Open Door doctrine, and it was the first response show- 
ing the effect of the American doctrine upon her polit- 
ical life. 

It was an awakening for America, since, by her 
activity in this, she became an important financial 
ally of China and a member of the foreign financial 
council of China. There was reason to feel that some 
of the errors of American diplomacy had been redeemed. 
The object attained respecting Manchuria, to which 
four ninths of the loan proceeds were to be applied, 
realized in part what had been aimed at in the defeated 
neutralization proposal. 

The signing of the currency loan was the result 
of President Taft's and Secretary Knox's plan of 
state in the interests of the Open Door and integrity 
of territory and sovereignty in China. It was an 
extension of the pledges of the powers to these prin- 
ciples. Not since the delegation by China of the 
American Minister, Anson Burlingame, as her special 
envoy to the West, had China relied upon any foreign 
agencies. In American relations with China, a wide 
gap since William H. Seward and Anson Burlingame was 
thus bridged by William H. Taft and Philander C. Knox. 

But the honest efforts of America could not save 
her from the suspicions and jealousies of the aggressive 
powers. "Dollar diplomacy" of course was despised 
among the Manchurian allies, and was taken up espe- 
cially in Japan, where it was made a term of reproach. 
This had its effect among partisans at home in America, 
where it was adopted in its new meaning by senti- 
mentalists and other opponents of the Government, 
and is still remembered by those whose sentimentalities 
are too vital to allow of disturbance from the evolution 
of facts. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Russia and Japan 

And this had been stirred up since the Portsmouth 
Conference ! Foreign affairs, full blown, came, for 
us, in the quarter that fired the imagination of the 
English historian of warfare, Creasy, when he proph- 
esied in 1851 "the conquest of China and Japan by 
the fleets and armies of the United States." In two 
years, in fact, through the Pacific, we had a system of 
foreign affairs elaborate as our unlimited and ungov- 
ernable influence in the world. We were not only 
entangled with Europe and with Asia in the Pacific, 
but with the European- Asian alliance there. 

In 1907, America's policy in the Pacific was receiving 
the sneers of Europe, especially of Britain and Russia, 
and was laughed at in Tokio and in Peking because 
it had no kind of physical backing. At that time we 
were the only great nation that had missed the message 
of our own naval captain, Mahan, of the importance 
of sea power, though we received a more respectful 
consideration from the world with the inauguration 
of the Panama Canal project, and when the Battle- 
ship Fleet in 1908 rounded the world. Thereafter 
it became impossible for Great Britain to ignore the 
obvious effects arising from American master excava- 
tions and herculean sea-works aimed at merging her 

144 



RUSSIA AND JAPAN 145 

two great oceans and making one stage for foreign 
affairs, and her lead was. followed by others. Euro- 
peans rightly told Roosevelt the hunter that these 
things were the two great deeds of Roosevelt the 
President. 

Taft then took a position even in advance of Roose- 
velt, bringing about a diplomatic battle centered in 
China, one of the most significant, as actually opening 
the struggle of the two civilizations in the Pacific, 
that ever occurred. Begun in 1909, on the lines of 
Taft's plan of state, in a fight with Japan's European 
allies for physical footing in China as physical backing 
for support of American policy, it was carried to Europe, 
and developed into a movement to oppose the prin- 
ciples of Japan's plan of expansion and continental 
empire, and of Europe's Asian diplomacy in China 
and the Pacific, which was holding Japan in its arms. 

These were the most important problems that had 
occupied Europe and America since Bismarck and 
Moltke, and indeed Napoleon. Taft and Knox, on 
one hand, and Katsura and Komura, on the other, were 
in a sense the chief contestants in this battle of what 
may be called the foremost political griefs of civiliza- 
tion — the fate of the greatest civilized nation of 
which anything is known. 

By 1910, Great Britain recognized that America 
was moving the enemies of China and of the Open Door 
powers from their base of special interests, and that 
the American Republic, with Canadian, Australian, 
and New Zealandic support, would hold the balance 
of power in the Pacific for safeguarding the natural 
working out of the relations of the two civilizations. 
Britain then supported us in our latest measure, the 
currency loan. It was shown that there was a 



146 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

sense in which Creasy in his prophecy of American 
power was right. It was possible for a combination 
of influences, such as this, to hold the balance of power 
in the Pacific, at least during the whole formative 
period of East Asia. The year 1911 brought a 
recognition of this, both to Great Britain and to 
America. 

But this was a fulfillment, the character of which 
would have surprised the prophet. America's con- 
quest had not been one of arms. In Hve years our 
superiority in the carrying trade of the Pacific, which 
had provoked Creasy's declaration, was ended, and 
our cultural influence began its ascendancy. It was 
naturally followed by statesmanship in East Asia, 
which, well suited to conditions, had brought us safely 
through the treaty period ; when Japan was opened, 
China was brought into diplomatic relations with the 
world, Korea was opened, and the Open Door doctrine 
was safely set up. We were now on the defensive. 
And it was the fleets and armies of Japan, not of the 
United States, that were in military control of "China 
and Japan" and the Pacific. They were backed by 
the military forces of Europe, against which we had 
only our diplomacy. 

When these alliances began we realized that, as in 
the past, we had only moral force and reason to lay 
in the balance. The Anglo- Japanese alliance the first, 
was disturbing. With those of Russia and France, 
and their successors, they showed how the power of 
the fleets and armies of Europe was transferable across 
the whole African and Asian world, and could be spread 
upon the Pacific, along the American frontier, even 
though these fleets and armies never left their Atlantic 
stations. 



RUSSIA AND JAPAN 147 

Creasy had not dreamt of this. The figment of his 
dream was now the steel of our opponents. And 
important as was our achievement in the currency 
loan, it was the last, as I will show, and, as in the 
case of our outlying military posts in the Pacific, our 
unsupported diplomatic missions, and unfinished gov- 
ernment enterprises of all sorts, only a source of weak- 
ness and danger instead of a strength. 

Perhaps the only obstacle to following up our suc- 
cesses was the lack of diplomatic resources. There 
was more happening on the other side of the fence 
than our Government and its people were aware of. 
We had done things really great in their way, but our 
opponent, Japan, was keeping pace; she was the 
leader of a coalition against us, and was passing us. 
We had made of her, whom we had first aided in her 
war with Russia, an enemy. She took from us her 
own enemy, Russia, who had long been our friend, 
making enemies allied. 

Bound by its islands and coasts to Russia, we have 
the vast Alaska, which we received from Russia in a 
most happy manner, much to her satisfaction and 
relief. How could we lose Russia ? 

Large commercial and social relations with Russia 
across the Pacific, anticipated when Perry McD. 
Collins visited the Amur as our first commercial 
agent there and endeavored to unite the two continents 
by land telegraph with communications across Bering 
Strait, never materialized. The telegraph was sur- 
veyed but never built. And after Alaska became 
ours, a railway often planned suffered the same fate. 
A fur trade, built up in Kamchatka and at Nicolaevsk, 
did not prosper long. A Puget Sound-Siberian steamer 
service, and an American-Russian company to fish 



148 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

and trade on the Siberian coast, succumbed. Russia 
long had endeavored to interest American capital in 
Siberian development. We were prejudiced against 
her government and afraid of her laws. So when her 
war with Japan came, we had made no more headway 
in our relations with Russia than in the Asiatic problem, 
and American sympathies were with Japan. It was 
in this situation that Russia pointed out to us, in 1904, 
when we aided Japan with our finance, and in 1905, 
when Japan gained her paramount position in East 
Asia, that America was now irrevocably involved in 
the outcome in China, and in defense by arms of her 
interests in the Pacific. 

The truth of this was shown from the date of the 
interference of America to make peace. In 1905, 
Marquis Ito communicated to President Roosevelt 
through his agent, Mr. Kaneko, Japan's desire for 
American intervention to stop the war. Roosevelt 
could not have refused. Such a request, together 
with the interests of America in the Pacific, required 
that she assume the foremost position among the pow- 
ers there. And America's real foreign affairs, as they 
have shaped themselves "for the next five centuries" 
— to use the words of John Hay — began. It began 
with the disaffection of our oldest friends in East 
Asia : Japan and Russia. 

Strange as it may seem, after peace was signed by 
Russia and Japan, it became the first problem of both 
to keep apart. This was because of the powder maga- 
zine called Manchuria. Thus the first act in the drama 
of the "five centuries." But Japan, after peace, 
must make a political arrangement of the powers in 
East Asia agreeable to her interests. To do this 
she had to traverse the interests of China and America, 



RUSSIA AND JAPAN 149 

and in a measure, of her allies. In fact, she perceived 
that her natural ally in this was Russia, since Russia's 
interests, like her own, were opposed to those of the 
Open Door powers. As she had renewed the Anglo- 
Japanese alliance, which had been directed against 
Russia, Russia therefore could not hold out any promise 
or encouragement of joint cause with Japan in future. 
But as Britain, her ally, had also the need of a political 
arrangement on her Russian frontier for mutual inter- 
ests, ajar stood a door to ultimate success. 

It was not apparent to Japan until after she had 
received, by the Portsmouth Treaty, certain secret 
information to be mentioned later, that the renewal 
of the Anglo-Japanese alliance three weeks previously 
had complicated her political task, and stood in the 
way of her opportunities. When she saw this, she 
determined to reach an understanding with Russia. 
First, therefore, in the great diplomatic battle between 
America on the one hand, and Japan and her allies 
on the other, comes Russia's part with respect to 
Japan. 

Two years before the Portsmouth Treaty, General 
Subotitch, first Governor of Port Arthur, recommended 
to General Kuropatkin, Minister of War, the liquida- 
tion of the whole of Russia's Manchurian interests, 
including the railways, and retirement to Siberia, 
so as not to come into conflict with the advance of 
the Japanese through Korea, and the active advance 
of the Chinese from Shantung and Chihli. Like a 
Siberian and Manchurian convict, Russia, from the 
day the peace was signed, for four years tracked her 
way fruitlessly through the wide wastes between 
Occidental and Oriental diplomacy, finance, and eco- 
nomics, for an avenue of escape. The story of this 



150 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

pilgrimage, entirely hidden from the world, and ending 
only when American diplomacy was defeated in Man- 
churia, tells how we lost Russia and Japan. 

Russia knew the reasons for remaining apart from 
Japan. Japan, guided by the conservatism and anxie- 
ties of Marquis Ito, with respect to too close intimacy 
with the Russian frontier before Japan could recuperate 
from the war, rushed to the solution with the Ito- 
Harriman agreement, signed in Tokio, October 5, 1905, 
for the transfer of the Japanese railways in Manchuria 
to the American financier, Edward H. Harriman, on 
a joint working basis, thus placing a neutral power, 
America, between herself and Russia. This was the 
first neutralization scheme. 

Came Komura to Tokio (from Portsmouth, New 
Hampshire), from whence date two Japans. He went 
dead against Ito. Komura said Japan must expand 
on the continent in China, and this expansion had 
sufficient political basis only in the rights which Japan 
had acquired from Russia by coming into possession 
of a share of her railway. Japan could not divide her 
railway rights with Harriman, or any one; she must 
cling to all she had acquired in order to share all the 
rights and advantages enjoyed by Russia. And she 
must not be embarrassed by American interference. 
Russia must be supported, and made to cling to all 
she held and had claimed in Manchuria, so as to give 
a basis for Japan's continental expansion. Japan 
could safely trust to the future to settle with Russia. 
Japan therefore abandoned the Ito-Harriman agree- 
ment, and thereafter stood for friendship with Russia, 
not evasion, and she began a four years' siege of Rus- 
sian confidence, first blowing hot, then cold, now angry, 
now conciliatory. 



RUSSIA AND JAPAN 151 

Russia was nonplussed at Japan's intentions, not 
knowing precisely the consequences of what was 
going on, and unwilling to admit the principle of Japan's 
practical enjoyment of her own peculiar rights in China. 
She avoided a political understanding with Japan, 
shunning it as America shuns European entanglements. 
Thereupon, because of Japan's pertinacity, Russia was 
confronted with the problem of stopping the Japanese 
advance across Manchuria, at her very border. 

During the four years mentioned, Russia many 
times escaped embarrassing relations, being once 
shielded from the inevitable outcome, as I will show 
in its full significance, by an assassin. All the time 
her foremost ministries were working on the burning 
question of segregation. The Ministry of War was 
at work on the new strategic problem of Russia in 
East Asia ; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in- 
volved in the political problem ; and the Ministry of 
Finance was occupied with the economic problem. 

The work of the Ministry of War was simple. Two 
opinions prevailed as to the problem of avoiding Japan. 
The first favored a railway by way of the northern 
extremity of Lake Baikal, along the most ancient 
Chinese-Siberian boundary, to Habarovsk and Vladi- 
vostok, to take the place of the Chinese Eastern Rail- 
way in Manchuria, now at the mercy of Japan; the 
progressive view being satisfied with the proposed 
Amur Railway, following the existing boundary along 
the north shore of the Amur River. The Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs was completely absorbed in treaty ques- 
tions with foreign powers in Manchuria. The Min- 
istry of Finance was in charge of all Russia's indus- 
trial, as well as financial, interests in East Asia, and 
upon it fell the responsibility of actually solving the 



152 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

entire problem and relieving Russia of the burden of 
her Japan-wrecked, Pacific empire. 

In 1906, the Army Council (sitting in St. Petersburg 
since the close of the war) decided in favor of promoting 
the Amur line, so that in case of need the Chinese 
Eastern Railway, Russia's Manchurian line, which 
could not be successfully defended, could be abandoned. 
This was approved by the Government, or Czar. And 
the Chinese Eastern Railway was for sale. As I 
have already intimated, the Russians first looked for 
a "rich uncle" in America. 

In 1907, the Duma was at once asked to sanction 
an appropriation of one hundred and fifty million 
dollars for the Amur Railway. The disposal of 
Russia's Manchurian railway was discussed by the 
Duma, and on account of the loss on it, annually, of 
about (gold) five million dollars, the principle was 
emphasized that imperial money should be expended 
but for one strategic railway project, and that if the 
Amur Railway were decided on, the outlay on the 
Manchurian must cease. 

When the matter reached this state, creating a na- 
tional opinion in Russia apparently in harmony with 
the Government's predisposition, Japan became ap- 
prehensive, and, in February, 1907, approached Russia 
with the view to an understanding. Overtures were 
made at St. Petersburg by Baron Motono, the Japanese 
Ambassador. Having herself mistakenly essayed dis- 
posal of a railway on which her policy of empire was 
based, she saw in Russia's course the cutting away alto- 
gether of the easy foundations of her future on the 
continent of Asia. 

In March, 1907, the deputies in the Duma, of whom 
the foremost advocates of the Amur Railway were 



RUSSIA AND JAPAN 153 

the Siberians, led by Professor Nekrasoff of Omsk, 
supported the project of selling the Manchurian, 
and applying the proceeds to the Amur Railway. 
The latter determined upon, the former became super- 
fluous. Motono's advances accomplished nothing. 

Russia understood that her retention of the Man- 
churian railway and insistence on her contractual 
rights in it, as well as other agreements, only gave a 
more firm and secure foundation for Japan's continental 
empire, and that this could be avoided only by the 
transfer of those rights to neutral powers, who could 
bestow upon them an interpretation more favorable 
to China than that which she had established. This 
had been worked out at Portsmouth. Russia, hope- 
lessly behind in development in East Asia, and dogged 
by Japan, was cherishing the project of turning over 
her railway to a neutral holder, in order to create 
a barrier against Japan, and had worked out the prin- 
ciples of disposal. This was the second neutraliza- 
tion scheme. 

In September, 1907, the Ministry of Finance, under 
M. Kokovtseff, sent Ivan Shipoff, its ex-chief, to investi- 
gate the whole economic situation in East Asia with 
reference to the salvation to Russia of her interests 
in that region. The investigation lasted three months, 
and the consequent renewed discussion of the project 
of sale of the Manchurian railway brought out in the 
Russian press the delicate point of segregation from 
the Japanese, at which point the discussion was stopped 
for prudential reasons. The pressure of the Japanese 
into Manchuria, and even upon Russia's Siberian 
border, raised the question among Russians of another 
war with Japan, and the unadvisability of withdrawing 
from the Manchurian railway, for military as well 



154 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

as political reasons, unless Japan would withdraw 
from her railway. 

In 1908, thoroughly alarmed at this now formidable 
menace to her interests and ambitions, Japan called 
her Manchurian lieutenants to Tokio and issued orders 
to conciliate the Russians. 

Now came the entanglement of all the powers in 
the question. Pending solution of her Manchurian 
difficulties, Russia, in conformity with her claims of 
right in the matter, held herself obliged to administer 
civil affairs in her railway territories in Manchuria, 
thus coming into conflict with the treaty powers be- 
cause of equal rights which China had granted them 
in opening Harbin and other places in Russia's railway 
territories to international trade. Japan herself had 
secured the opening of two of these places, and thereby 
directly established in them the equal rights of the 
powers. On account of the Open Door policy, America 
was the first to assert the rights of the powers under 
the treaty, and the sovereignty of China in Manchuria 
as against that of Russia. 

Japan welcomed America's stand, because it forced 
Russia to defend her rights, and therefore Japan's 
rights, before the tribunal of the powers, which would 
throw light upon the mutual interests of Russia and 
Japan. Russia had to show cause for exercise of 
sovereignty in Manchuria, and there came the dis- 
closure of one of her secret agreements with China 
which, by the secret minutes of the Portsmouth Treaty, 
had become the property of Japan. She made known 
"Article VI" of the Russian-Chinese contract of 1896 
for the building of the Manchurian railway. This 
secret article gave the railway (Russia) "absolute and 
exclusive right of administration in the territories 



RUSSIA AND JAPAN 155 

attached to the Railway." This was Japan's legacy 
from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, exchanged by 
Russia, in secret, under America's nose. When Russia 
gave it to us, due to our opposition, it was as a diplo- 
matic high explosive, let loose in an identical note from 
M. PokotilofT, Russia's Minister at Peking, to the 
powers at the beginning of the year. 



CHAPTER IX 

Russia and America 

It was the first great revelation resulting from 
America's new policy. It was the beginning of our 
great blunders. Japan was steadily beating us in 
detail, dispersing the forces favorable to us without 
our knowing it. She had been working on Russia 
for several years before we uncovered her trail, and 
then we did not know it was her trail. She had her 
arms with her, but diplomatic tactics was the only 
weapon she needed for checkmating us, and accom- 
plishing her ends. It was the race of the giant and 
the pigmy, and the pigmy was winning, hands down. 

Russia's disclosure was of immense advantage to 
Japan, who had been waiting for it, and now began 
an even heavier diplomatic battering of Russia. 
Though Japan had assisted in raising the question, 
she immediately reversed her position, notifying her 
officials and subjects in North Manchuria that the 
right of administration of the territories attached to 
the Russian railway belonged to that railway. Then, 
on February 13, 1908, she informed Russia of what 
she had done, and at the same time asked Russia to 
recognize the similar right of the Japanese railway ! 

Japan had been waiting two years to accomplish 
this. 

156 



RUSSIA AND AMERICA 157 

On February 15, 1908, our Government, apparently 
densely ignorant of the consequences of the game, — 
and through having no conception of what was going 
on, and no idea or plan, being unable to recognize 
"Article VI", — warned Russia that persistence in 
her administrative efforts would raise treaty questions, 
in which case America would have to assert her rights. 
Rockhill, our Minister at Peking, on orders from Wash- 
ington, conveyed this message to the Russian Minister, 
M. Korostovetz. As by a "lightning before death" 
we hesitated, adding that America did! not wish to 
cause Russia trouble in the matter. But we were 
lost. 

On February 21, 1908, Russia replied to Japan's 
request for reciprocal recognition of authority, of 
exclusive and absolute administration in the rail- 
way territories of South Manchuria, and said that she 
was prepared to take proper steps when the occasion 
arose. It showed Japan that Russia had determined, 
if we persisted in our inconceivable but very real and 
bootless gaucherie, that she would give us what we 
deserved. This was interpreted by Japan as an affirm- 
ative, and was sufficiently equivocal neither to bind 
Russia nor obstruct Japan. Simultaneously, the Jap- 
anese Consul General at Harbin gave out the state- 
ment : "If Russia insists on building the Amur Rail- 
way, it can only be interpreted as meaning that Russia 
is preparing for another war, whereas she ought to be 
satisfied with the Chinese Eastern Railway." Japan 
was determined that Russia adhere to her railway and 
its rights. 

In March, 1908, Russia was in such complications 
with the powers, headed by America, and pressed 
so hard by Japan, that she complained to us of our 



158 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

refusal to recognize her authorities at Harbin, the chief 
point of conflict with the powers. On April 3, 1908, 
America pointed out that Russia was exercising sov- 
ereignty in the Empire of China through the instru- 
ments of a bank and railway company (Russo-Chinese 
Bank — Chinese Eastern Railway Company), which 
was illegal and inadmissible. Russia's diplomatic 
position was so weak, we were so merciless, and she 
was so intimidated by Japan, that she permitted her 
Foreign Office, which was incensed against us, to work 
at loggerheads with her Ministry of Finance, which 
hoped to stay the political onslaught until it could 
dispose of the railway which, if sold to us, would solve 
the danger from "Article VI" and create a buffer 
region between Russia and Japan. Seeing this, Japan 
whipsawed the Russians. Korostovetz, from Peking, 
warned his Government of its anticlimax in permitting 
the two ministries to work at loggerheads. 

Japan had now in operation an organized, intensive 
program for consummating, by "Article VI", the 
principle of a division of sovereignty in Manchuria, 
something which Russia in thirteen years had failed 
to do, and which Japan, by the Russian-Japanese War, 
was responsible for preventing. 

While negotiations were going on between Russia 
and America, Japan's semiofficial newspaper, The 
Kokumin, taunted Russia with giving way to America 
regarding "Article VI", and boasted that "Japan's 
jurisdiction in South Manchuria is more strongly 
established than Russia's in North Manchuria." 
Japan's attitude was highly assertive, and indicated 
a disposition to establish Japanese authority in Jap- 
anese Manchuria, entirely independent of any prec- 
edents or agreements. Japan's policy actually, for a 



RUSSIA AND AMERICA 159 

year now, had been based upon her advantages in 
hand in Manchuria. She had taken from Russia 
that which, in making war, she had denied Russia, 
namely, special rights in Manchuria, and was supported 
in this by her alliances. 

In May, 1908, Japan sent Baron Goto to St. Peters- 
burg (Petrograd), to sound Russia on her attitude 
toward "Article VI" and the possibility of arriving 
at an understanding. Russia held aloof, eluding her 
solicitous neighbor by appointing negotiations to be 
taken up between the two railways in Manchuria. 
Mr. Tanaka, director of the Japanese Railway, went 
to Harbin, — Japan always went to Russia, — where 
Russia refused to consider economic and commercial 
questions with railway officials, as she had refused to 
discuss political questions with envoys. Mr. Tanaka 
departed in disgust. Both missions failed ; Russia 
was again relieved of Japanese importunity. 

During the year of discussion between America 
and Russia, the other nations were not idle. China 
was struggling in Manchuria for her sovereignty, as 
in her Kinchou-Aigun Railway scheme, her mission 
to America to get funds for industrial and administra- 
tive purposes there, her efforts to bring about the 
formation of an international syndicate to take over the 
railways, and her endeavors to get agreements from 
both Japan and Russia. Russia arranged with her a 
"formal interpretation" of the now famous "Article 
VI", intended to make the authority of the railway 
and that of the Russian Government agree, so as to 
satisfy the objections of the Open Door powers. On 
May 10, 1909, it was signed, and China understood 
it to be a plan for joint administration of the railway 
territories, preserving to her the sovereignty. Not so 



160 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

the powers, who joined America in further opposition 
to Russia; even Russia's ally, France, said she "could 
not take a position inferior to that taken by the other 
powers." All this worked in the interest of Japan 
in more fully establishing "Article VI", and in forcing 
Russia along the pathway of a joint understanding. 
But Russia was still clear of entanglements, and free 
to dispose of her railway if she desired. 

Russia's hope, as nurtured by the Ministry of Fi- 
nance, fixed itself upon America's financial activity in 
China. While she was negotiating with Harriman, 
China still clamored for her sovereignty in the railway 
territories, and in the summer of 1909, for reasons 
similar to those which were inspiring Russia, she put 
forward proposals to herself buy Russia's railway. 
This was the third neutralization scheme. America's 
active policy underlaid all these movements. Though 
penniless, China, on the strength of our activity and 
support, felt herself rich enough to pay Japan and 
Russia for their railways in Manchuria, however 
excessive the price. 

Fearing the effect of an actual awakening of America 
to her vital foreign interests, Japan created a diversion. 
Her need was to worry Russia a little more. She 
brought forward the question of opening to naviga- 
tion and trade, for all nations, the Amur and Sungari 
rivers in Russian Manchuria, a treaty privilege hitherto 
enjoyed by Russia alone. By treaty authority of the 
rights of nations to equality, on July 1, 1909, China 
declared the two rivers open. This gave Japan a share 
of other of Russia's peculiar privileges. And as Japan 
was the only power prepared to take advantage of 
the opening of the Amur and Sungari, and her pressure 
northward was already a burning question, she thus 



RUSSIA AND AMERICA 161 

possessed something which it would be worth while 
for Russia to get back. 

Russia, perceiving Japan's fine Oriental hand in this, 
and fearing the invasion of Japanese on her frontier, 
refused to recognize the customs stations which China 
promptly set up, and demanded that China declare 
her attitude as to foreign craft applying for registra- 
tion on these rivers, especially Japanese craft, in con- 
travention of Russia's exclusive rights. 

The drama of the "centuries", as it thus opened, 
was moving rapidly. Japan was leaps ahead, with 
America grasping at every question to mold it to the 
Open Door doctrine, succeeding only in antagonizing 
all the Manchurian allies through perpetually insisting 
upon this doctrine and the integrity of China's sov- 
ereignty and territory. Japan's dash began to take 
the breath of informed Russians, and the Novoe Vremya 
in St. Petersburg, Russia's semiofficial newspaper, 
impressed by the magnificence with which we were 
rising to the occasion, urged an understanding with us 
respecting the integrity of China. In consideration 
of Russian negotiations with Harriman and of all that 
we were doing in China, St. Petersburg was willing to 
forget its unsuccessful attempt to secure our consent 
to a modification of the principles of the Open Door, 
with special reference to Russian Manchuria. 

It was a hint which we had no ears to hear and 
could not understand. And, nothing resulting but 
the deeper wading of Japan into Russia's preserves, 
Russia's Ministry of Finance summarily concluded 
its deliberations. And the result reached was a 
definite neutralization proposal for the solution of the 
whole Manchurian question for Russia, such as America 
offered to the powers only some months later. Russia's 



162 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Manchurian question involving China's claim to ad- 
ministration in the railway zone territories, as thus 
determined, was explained by the Minister of Finance, 
Kokovtseff, who said : 

"If an insistence on our conditions [Russian sov- 
ereignty in the railway territories] is impossible with- 
out risking a war, and we are not prepared to support 
our demands with arms, then the sole solution appears 
to be the liquidation of our concession [Chinese Eastern 
Railway] after the expiration of the term of our con- 
tract and the completion of the Amur Railway. 

"Under these circumstances, the most satisfactory 
issue of the difficult relations between Russia and 
China, would be the transfer of the administration of 
the Chinese Eastern Railway to a special international 
organization, each nation taking over a part of our 
invested capital and a corresponding share of the guar- 
anteed revenues. The date of liquidation must de- 
pend upon the construction of the Amur Railway, as 
otherwise, Primorskaya Province would be cut off 
from Russia." 

This was the fourth neutralization scheme. 

Russia had not, up to this time, allowed her Foreign 
Office to interfere with the Ministry of Finance, which 
had gone pretty far. The latter was making Russia's 
last offering of her railway in Wall Street, where the 
value of the proposed bargain, to us, was enhanced 
by the success of the attack from the powers, led by 
America, on Russia's right of administration in Man- 
churia, as represented in "Article VI." 

On September 9, 1909, Harriman died, extinguishing 
perhaps the only opportunity in the world for the 
sale of the Russian railway, the possibility of which, 
from the beginning, had depended solely upon the 



RUSSIA AND AMERICA 163 

great ideas of Ilarriman. Defeated in this, and per- 
haps disappointed from failing at a plan in which Japan 
had successfully preceded her, Russia turned to the 
task of establishing among the powers their acceptance 
of "Article VI" as a fait accompli. The effort of 
the Ministry of Finance was about over. Russia's 
political problem with Japan was paramount. 

Began, finally, the loss to us of Russia. On Octo- 
ber 8, 1909, the Russian Foreign Office addressed to 
the powers a communique containing the Russian- 
Chinese "Interpretation" of May 10, 1909. It em- 
phasized the apparent fact of China's accord with 
Russia, seeming to make Russia China's deputy ad- 
ministrator in the Russian railway territories in Man- 
churia. Its intent was to quiet charges of Russian 
violation of Chinese sovereignty. The Foreign Office 
was alarmed at the complications, responsibility for 
which was charged to the Ministry of Finance. 

By this time, what Russia would do was a burning 
question in Tokio. Japan, in her conciliation policy, 
was promoting a propaganda on Russian-Japanese 
community of interests in Manchuria and Mongolia, 
and the necessity of standing together. Russia dis- 
trusted Japan. Neither Japan nor Russia believed 
there was not something concealed in America's 
activities. Russia, already several times disappointed, 
was wasting a good deal of effort in trying to find out 
a secret that had no existence. Japan was equally 
anxious and far more alarmed at the success and 
boldness of America in setting up a physical base in 
China from which properly to interfere in all Open 
Door matters there. So long as this affected only 
China proper, Japan did not exert herself. But now 
she discovered that China had given to Americans 



164 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

the concession for the railway traversing Manchuria 
from end to end and cleaving both Japanese and 
Russian spheres — the Kinchou-Aigun contract. 

Came the loss to us of Japan. The latter approached 
Russia with a proposal for a joint Russian- Japanese 
protest which Russia equivocally assented to. Begin- 
ning October 12, 1909, the two countries protested to 
China, but independently and from different motives. 
Russia protested because the new railway represented 
the development of Manchuria by both Japan and 
China, and the Japanese and Chinese advance feared 
by Russians. She protested on account of the weak- 
ness of her frontier. Japan protested, to support the 
claim that the railway be made a part of her own rail- 
way system, thus elaborating the basis of her position 
in China. 

Seeing that an understanding about Manchuria 
could not be put off, and that she must decide what 
she was going to do, Russia sent Kokovtseff to Man- 
churia, where an arrangement was made to meet a 
representative from Japan. Later, when Japan had 
succeeded in forcing Russia into a joint policy which 
defeated America's neutralization proposal, it was given 
out in St. Petersburg that Russia, having learned of 
the American proposal beforehand, sent Kokovtseff 
to Manchuria to meet Prince Ito with the object of 
arriving at an understanding between Japan and Russia 
against the American proposal, should it be made. 
But this was only for Japanese consumption, when 
Russia no longer had any hopes of her own plans, and 
realized she was being driven into the arms of Japan. 
The representatives of the two powers appeared from 
different motives, though by arrangement, on the 
battleground in Manchuria. While Prince Ito, who 



RUSSIA AND AMERICA 165 

had signed the Ito-Harriman agreement, and who was 
the highest adviser of the Emperor of Japan, and 
Japan's man of greatest political stature, now went to 
Manchuria, as we must believe upon the evidence that 
lies without the Emperor's council in Tokio, in defense 
against America's plans, Kokovtseff went to Manchuria 
to take a final personal survey of the situation respect- 
ing the possibility of neutralizing Russia's railway 
there. He went with the promise given to Noetzlin, 
of the International Wagons-Lits, that, on his return 
he would recommend the sale of Russia's Manchurian 
railway. Russia's first consideration was some solu- 
tion of the Manchurian question so as to escape Japan. 

The meeting at Harbin, October 26, 1909, was that 
of two nations whom a combination of remarkable 
circumstances, of which neither was wholly master, 
but of which Russia knew Japan to be the "god in 
the car", had thrown together. Russia had made 
no overtures to Japan ; she was at Japan's mercy. 
The onlookers at Peking spoke of the coming liaison 
as that of the lion and the lamb, and taunted Russia 
with making her bed in the lion's maw. Russia to 
the last cherished the unpromising plan of ridding 
herself of the railway, so as to avoid entanglement. 

The meeting in M. Kokovtseff's railway carriage 
at Harbin, — in every case Japan went to Russia, 
regardless of rank and precedence, — was entirely 
formal. It was a preliminary meeting, brief, and the 
Russians present felt a sense of relief when it ended, 
and they realized that nothing had happened to com- 
mit them. Nothing had happened to show that when 
Prince Ito stepped from M. Kokovtseff's car his mind 
had any cause to feel relief from the burden of his 
thoughts as to what Russia yet might do toward dis- 



166 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

posing of her railway. The possibility of her surrender- 
ing her claims to administrative sovereignty over her 
railway territories, which was the principal basis of 
Japan's continental policy since the war, remained an 
unsolved menace to Japanese ambitions. 

I regret the occasion of again referring to an incident 
of uncommon sadness to all Americans, and one from 
which I would have been glad to turn away, even 
though it illuminates perhaps more powerfully than 
could any illustration at command, the American 
problem of Japan and the Pacific which my book 
undertakes to disclose. Closely following Prince Ito 
as he stepped from the car, in the position of the game 
stalking the hunter, came M. Kokovtseff. Prince Ito 
passed down the line of Russian railway guards on 
parade, turned about, and started back, when a Korean 
spectator in the crowd lifted a revolver, fired two shots 
into his body, and emptied the remaining cartridges 
of the weapon at the Prince's escort. A Russian 
cinematograph operator stumbled over his apparatus 
and fled. Prince Ito sank to the ground, was carried 
into his railway carriage, and died in a few minutes. 

When we look back upon the stirring days of the 
Japanese Restoration, when Prince Ii was assassinated 
for signing the American treaty, we think of them as 
days that could never be repeated, compared with 
which the present is a tame and dreary treadmill of 
sordid and monotonous uneven tfulness. Yet here 
were events that could be measured only at the cost 
of the life of one of the greatest world men of the last 
forty years. The last political tragedy of the kind 
in East Asia had been the murder of the Queen of 
Korea by a Japanese. An attempt had been made 
upon the life of the eminent Li Hung-chang, which 



RUSSIA AND AMERICA 167 

had aroused the sympathy of the world, and more 
recently the governor of a Chinese province had been 
assassinated. But seldom have international affairs 
in East Asia, ancient or modern, risen to the dramatic 
and breathless tension that accompanied this tragic 
meeting of the Russian Minister of Finance and the 
great Japanese Elder Statesman and Prince, in Russian 
Manchuria. From the seemingly inevitable under- 
standing with Japan, which she feared, and had so 
long successfully avoided, Russia was again shielded, 
strangely enough by an assassin, and one totally igno- 
rant of the facts above recited. 

Russia promptly expressed sorrow that such a 
calamity had occurred, and, as she said, on Russian 
territory. At the sound appeared China. Like Ban- 
quo's ghost, the specter of Chinese sovereignty for 
a moment solemnly arose in the question as to whom 
belonged the prisoner. China hesitated in awe, while 
exultant at the assassination. Russia seized the 
assassin, and Japan received, at this tragic altar and 
bier of her first statesman and subject, what consola- 
tion there might be of confirmation of Russian and 
Japanese railway zone sovereignty, in receiving the 
prisoner. China was ignored. She was the cat, look- 
ing at kings. 

Ito's thoughts and hopes respecting the mission 
upon which his Emperor had sent him were buried 
with him. He was heard to utter one word. When 
told who had shot him, he said : "Fool." Kokovtseff 
attended the body of the great Oriental to the limits 
of Russian "territory" at Chiang-chun. Japan cast 
flashing glances at America. While the feelings of 
the Japanese people toward this country and Russia 
warred with each other, Japan rested her case. 



168 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

We might be considered indirectly responsible for 
Ito's death. I do not know what the sentiments of 
the Japanese people on the matter are. But the in- 
formed official class and others cannot escape the 
conclusion, holding the view, as they do, that the 
influence and interference of America in East Asian 
affairs are the foundation of Japan's difficulties with 
China, and a great deal of her European difficulties 
as well. At the same time there hangs over the mem- 
ory of Prince Ito the cloud of apparent desertion of 
his own political convictions and the principles for 
which he stood with us in East Asia and the Pacific 
to go over to the banner of Komura and the expan- 
sionists. We cannot assume that Ito at Harbin re- 
tained, even with reservations, his original approval 
of the American plan as presented by Harriman, or 
that he was prepared to make any concessions to 
Kokovtseff. It was, however, within the bounds of 
possibility that had Ito lived, the course of history, as 
has been surmised, might have taken the turn which 
Mr. Otto H. Kahn points out once hung on the fate 
of the agreement made by Mr. Harriman. Ito was 
acquainted with the essential facts. He may have 
been prepared to compromise with Russia. Is it 
possible that the anger of the Japanese Government 
and the necessities of politics in East Asia have pre- 
vented a declaration of her intentions on that occasion ? 
In Ito's fate was not the chance to vindicate his posi- 
' tion. The last opportunity of his life to explain by 
an act his attitude to Komura's ruthless plan of state, 
and set himself right in American eyes, was snatched 
from him by a vagabond, alien "fool." 

It does not seem possible that Ito could have failed, 
on this supreme occasion, to have affixed some terminal 



RUSSIA AND AMERICA 169 

possibilities to Japanese ambitions under Komura's 
leadership and plans. That fate was against him is 
the circumstance to which is due America's situation 
and problem in the Pacific to-day. Already intimi- 
dated by Japan's successful diplomatic slugging, Russia 
took fright at the murder of Prince Ito while under 
Russian guard and protection, and immediately ordered 
her Minister at Peking to formally deliver to China 
the communique which, October 8, Russia had pre- 
sented to the great powers. This order reached 
Peking before Korostovetz, the Minister, who had 
gone to Harbin, returned. The action was that of 
panic. The amazed Minister warned St. Petersburg 
that China would not agree with the Russian view, 
and that it would bring down upon them an appeal 
by China to the powers against the communique. 
And this actually followed. 

It took some time to understand this great tragedy 
of Prince Ito. Russia and Japan contemplated each 
other, but in spite of their intimate struggles there 
was nothing to show that they were in reality any 
nearer in sympathy and understanding than before. 
Russia was all but outrun. She had not realized any 
feasible plan of arresting Japan's aggression, and there 
was no promise of her realizing the neutralization of 
her railway alone. 

Utter mischief for China had been raised by Japan's 
getting into Russia's preserves and dividing them, for 
she had a power for making use of them greater than 
all the rest of the world, including China. Russia 
was still recoiling from the Japanese impact of 1904 
and 1905. She was still beating a retreat. As a 
temporary expedient, unable to resist Japan and the 
powers, she had staked everything on "Article VI." 



170 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Only Japan openly supported her. Under pressure of 
disapproval from the powers, focused by America's 
policy, in desperation at her predicament, and just 
before we came to her intended relief, Russia, through 
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at St. Petersburg, 
said to Ambassador Rockhill, "America will drive 
Russia into the arms of Japan if she persists in her 
uncompromising attitude." As there was then no 
compromise in the Open Door doctrine and the prin- 
ciples of Chinese integrity and sovereignty, and as we 
had never comprehended the consequences of the 
case, this could not be helped. 

The Russian-Manchurian convict bear was now har- 
assed and driven. China was appealing for protection 
of her sovereignty. The Open Door powers were 
demanding their treaty rights. On December 16, 
1909, recognizing these things, and the dangers due 
to the advanced position into which Japan was moving, 
and with a view to arresting these ever-increasing 
complications, after the individual plans of Japan, 
Russia, China, and the powers had failed, the Ameri- 
can Government itself proposed to Russia, Japan, and 
the powers, as I have shown, the neutralization of all 
the Manchurian railways, including its own proposed 
Kinchou-Aigun line, by purchase and restoration to 
China, as the others, in part, and especially the Russian 
Ministry of Finance, had devised. This was the fifth 
neutralization project. 

Kokovtseff's purpose never wavered. Even after 
Ito's death he recommended sale of Russia's railway 
to an international syndicate. But Russia rejected 
the proposal, and was received into the arms of Japan. 
Her action, to the American Government, and to 
others acquainted with the above facts, was the wonder 



RUSSIA AND AMERICA 171 

of the hour. It was explained by outsiders as due to 
distrust of America's motives caused by bungling 
diplomacy in presenting the proposal in St. Petersburg, 
and by Russians as due to the grandiose nature of the 
plan. But why did she reject it ? 



CHAPTER X 

Political Secrets 

It were wiser in us, in view of coming conflicts, to 
have looked into their shadows and worked out this 
history and its message long ago. 

The situation after our efforts was this : An up- 
heaval had occurred in China, especially in Manchuria, 
and Japan had completely developed the basis of her 
plan of empire. This had been done in the presence 
of most of the statesmen, diplomats, and administra- 
tors of the world, especially those foremost in the gov- 
ernments of China, Russia, Japan, and America. 
Many of them visited Manchuria in quest of the polit- 
ical equilibrium of East Asia. In China was Yuan 
Shih-k'ai, and the great Chinese counselors, Chang 
Chih-tung, Hsu Shih-chang, Na Tung, Hsi Liang, and 
others; Tong Shao-yi and Liang Tun-yen were in- 
volved, with the representatives of other nations. 
China, in pursuit of her sovereign rights, sent her Man- 
churian governors to Russian Manchuria to investi- 
gate everything. She appointed special commissioners 
to negotiate with Russia at Harbin. She twice super- 
seded her ablest viceroys at Mukden, each being en- 
joined to execute successful measures counter to 
Japanese and Russian designs. 

Russia dispatched special commissioners from St. 

172 



POLITICAL SECRETS 173 

Petersburg, one Minister and one ex-Minister of Fi- 
nance, and one of them, with General Horvat, Ad- 
ministrator of the Russian Railway, visited Peking. 
The other was met in Manchuria by the Russian Minis- 
ter at Peking. Russia sent numerous diplomatic and 
military agents to North China and her Pri-amur 
Province in connection with the attempt to solve what 
was the greatest political question in the world. Gen- 
eral Gerngros, who had fought against the Japanese 
in Manchuria, came from the Czar, with a military 
staff from St. Petersburg, and the Archimandrite 
Mission from Peking, to observe the dedication of the 
Japanese monument to the Russian defenders of Port 
Arthur, a work whose execution was one of Japan's 
graceful acts in her policy of conciliation of and affilia- 
tion with Russia. 

Japan's leading men had many of them visited Man- 
churia in connection with building the basis of Japan's 
continental empire. They included General Terauchi, 
Minister of War, and Prince Ito, who came twice. 
Gonsuke Hayashi, Minister at Peking, visited Japanese 
Manchuria when Japan's interests there were an 
enigma, and the questions with China appeared un- 
solvable. General Oshima, Governor of Kuangtung 
(Port Arthur and surroundings), remained in charge of 
Japan's interests, a foreign representative equal in 
rank with China's Viceroy at Mukden. Prince Fushimi 
came; and the missions of imperial, diplomatic, and 
military agents were unending. It was the fashion 
among Japanese of all grades to make Manchuria a 
way-station in all their travels. 

France was inconspicuous in this drama, but her 
participation as an ally of Russia was perfectly real. 
Germany for a time took no active part. Doctor 



174 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Dernburg, her Colonial Minister, afterward notorious 
as Germany's war agent in the United States, visited 
North China and Siberia. But Germany, while in- 
terested, sub rosa, stood in the background. Of all 
the Manchurian allies, Great Britain, on account of 
her scrupulous interpretation of her obligations under 
her alliance, and the opposition it created among the 
British people, distinguished herself, as I will show. 
The lament of Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of Foreign 
Affairs, and one of the World War statesmen, to the 
effect that with respect to Manchuria he could do 
nothing, will make him remembered least enviably by 
China. In this affair no other British official was so 
unlucky, and no foreign statesman deserved more 
ingratitude from China unless it was Iswolsky, then 
Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, who, to his critics, 
appeared incapable of rising to an idea so happy and 
so splendid as that of the neutralization proposal of 
America. 

At least for several years, America took a place in 
the drama but little less important than Japan's. 
Heralding the gathering of the chieftains alluded to, 
came President Roosevelt (1903), declaring the "Pacific 
Era", later restricting his efforts in the affairs of East 
Asia to the Japanese question, and although striking 
spectacular and great blows, driving at the nailhead 
straight in the direction of war as it has been promised 
to us in the Pacific. The burly American wielded the 
tomahawk over Ambassador Aoki, bringing about his 
recall and the practical exclusion of the Japanese from 
the United States, while with his common stick he 
sent the Battleship Fleet maneuvering in the Pacific, 
successfully creating an anti-Oriental bond in the 
Pacific area. 



POLITICAL SECRETS 175 

Our problem in China, left to Secretary Root, was 
fought along negligently after this. It then encountered 
the determination of President Taft and Secretary 
Knox. At Peking, Minister Rockhill nursed our prob- 
lem along in its early stages, followed by Mr. Fletcher, 
his First Secretary. It was the fashion for ministers 
of state, colonial secretaries, and administrators to 
visit China, and so came Secretary of War Taft, visit- 
ing all East Asia, Siberia, and Russia. Thereafter, as 
President, promoting the doctrines of Hay and McKin- 
ley, he imitated in China the boldness of Roosevelt at 
home, displacing the indifference of Root by the activity 
of Knox, later sending his own Secretary of War, 
Dickinson, in his footsteps to East Asia, and contend- 
ing with all the powers at once. 

This galaxy of international political stars and star 
dust supplied the setting due Japan, as "the god in 
the car" of the Manchurian question, and to show 
that the answer to the question of Russia's refusal of 
our neutralization proposal was due to Japan's new 
plan of empire. As it appears to one who has watched 
it from the outside, and what is deducible from 
some knowledge from the inside of the Japanese 
Foreign Office, this plan, briefly, is comprehended 
as follows : 

On September 5, 1905, Japan and Russia signed 
under American auspices "the Portsmouth Treaty", 
binding them to the principle of the integrity of China, 
the restoration of Manchuria to China, and the preser- 
vation of China's sovereignty there. 

Russia was willing to give up her footing in Man- 
churia. 

Japan was willing to give up her footing in Man- 
churia. 



176 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

The Treaty contained other things in its secret 
minutes, notably the obligation of Russia to give 
Japan texts of her written agreements with China, 
some of which gave the secret basis of Russia's political 
footing in Manchuria. Some of Japan's war gains 
were specified in the Treaty, such as : half of the 
Island of Saghalin, payment for the care in Japan of 
Russian prisoners, the Russian Railway south of 
Chiang-chun, etc. But there was one unspecified 
asset of war of which no one knew at the time, except 
Russia, who did not seem to realize what would be its 
value to Japan. This asset was "Article VI." Shared 
with Japan, provisions in "Article VI" gave a success- 
ful rival special rights and privileges with which that 
rival could undermine Russia and conquer China. 
Japan reconsidered before giving up her footing in 
Manchuria, as she might have done by the policy con- 
templated in the Ito-Harriman agreement, and awaited 
receipt of a full knowledge of the possibilities of Russia's 
secret basis by which she had dominated Manchuria. 

It was some time before these two Japans were 
recognized by the world. But as things go, it took but 
a brief diplomacy to materialize them. Summed up 
from what is left over from the story of Russia's keen, 
eventful race for the political open, and her swift finish 
in the "arms of Japan", it is this : On abandoning the 
Ito-Harriman agreement, Japan reversed her continental 
policy two months later at Peking, by the Ching- 
Komura convention, establishing herself in Northern 
China as a legatee of Russia. Immediately inaugurat- 
ing her plan of expansion in North China on the basis 
of "Article VI", she closely invested Russia diplo- 
matically, in Russian parlance, dogging her footsteps. 
She subverted Korea's government and king, changed 



POLITICAL SECRETS 177 

her policy toward the powers, from the basis of the 
Portsmouth Treaty and other treaties, to that of ac- 
quired interests and potential advantages in China, 
arranged loans for industrial development in Man- 
churia, and created by imperial ordinance "The South 
Manchurian Railway Company" — a Japanese govern- 
ment corporation, to exercise for Japan, and in viola- 
tion of the sovereignty of China, the same sovereign 
functions which the Chinese Eastern Railway Com- 
pany (and the Russo-Chinese Bank) exercised, in vio- 
lation of the sovereignty of China, for Russia, and to 
execute "Article VI." 

Captain Brinkley, the official apologist for Japan, 
tried to explain this. In his words, when Japan thus 
took, in Manchuria, at the end of the war, that which, 
in making war, she had denied Russia: "It was 
scarcely to be expected that Japan alone should make 
a large sacrifice on the altar of a theory [the Open Door 
and integrity of territory and sovereignty of China 
within her borders] to which no other State thought of 
yielding any retrospective obedience whatever." 

Japan's "retrospective" pledges ended. No other 
State had anything in China relatively worth retro- 
ceding, except Russia, perhaps, and had Japan set the 
fashion as she evidently intended and declared she was 
doing in the beginning, she would have deprived herself 
of a continental empire, to be paid for by China. She 
would have given up Manchuria, "the base for the con- 
quest of the whole of East Asia !" 

See what she did to avoid this. She secured a 
nominal pledge from Russia supporting her own right 
of administration through the railway in South Man- 
churia, thus setting up the principle of the division of 
sovereignty in Manchuria. She then took advantage 



178 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

of Russia's conflict with the treaty powers in China to 
increase the division in Russian policy, whetting Russia's 
ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs against each 
other, and through her ambassador and special envoys 
promoting a Russian-Japanese policy and propaganda. 
She brought pressure upon Russia by immigration 
enterprises on the latter's frontiers, forcing open the 
Amur and Sungari rivers to trade ; asserted equal foot- 
ing with Russia in Russia's special Manchurian and 
Mongolian frontier trade rights ; opposed with Russia 
the China-American Railway in Manchuria ; arraigned 
Great Britain against it, and enlisted her active opposi- 
tion to prevent its ratification by the Chinese Throne 
(Russia and France following) ; and made every effort 
to arrest Russia's plans for the introduction of neutral 
powers into Manchuria. 

Japan, as the climax of this drama approached, had 
extended her communications and her activities from 
the dividing line of Russian and Japanese Manchuria 
to the Siberian border, and was about to spread herself 
over the water system of Russian Manchuria. The 
loss of Ito, for which Russia felt herself blamed, and 
the tremendous force of Japan's diplomatic success, 
appeared to completely conquer Russia. It was easy 
for the four Manchurian allies practically to consoli- 
date, leaving America the only power at China's side. 
Japan found an understanding with Russia regarding 
the permanency of "Article VI", and of the future of 
their mutual interests, appreciably near. She saw that 
the idea of the practical difficulties in the way of the 
Open Door principle, in view of her opposition to it, 
had taken hold of Great Britain, not to say France, so 
that she had little to fear, from her standpoint, from 
the militant Open Door diplomacy of America. In 



POLITICAL SECRETS 179 

the neutralization proposal, Russia capitulated a second 
time to Japan, but through fear. 

To make clear America's subsequent situation in the 
Pacific, America's diplomacy may be expressed with 
the same brevity. When Japan decided to act upon 
a new plan of empire on the continent, she left to future 
events the revelation of her purposes. It was impos- 
sible to believe in the beginning, but in the course of 
two or three years we could finally clearly perceive 
that Japan's claims of special rights could not be 
made to agree with her pledges, with Ito's view of 
Manchuria upon which the peace was made, and with 
similar pledges of the great powers. 

When we began to take action in China in the in- 
terests of the Open Door, we were drawn into it in the 
belief that things were drifting — not that Japan was 
the deus ex machina of them. What America knew 
now was that during four years preceding her neutrali- 
zation proposal, Russia made every effort to dispose 
of her railway, cautiously at first, and unknown to 
Japan, so as to place a neutral power or combination of 
powers between herself and Japan ; that these two 
nations kept up a suspicious, apprehensive surveillance 
of each other respecting these plans, without a break, 
until our proposal came. 

Then, when Japan had stalked Russia into a polit- 
ical cut de sac, from which, in her stampeded condition, 
she could not escape unaided, America merely put 
together the unsatisfied aspirations and desires of 
Russia, and the past pledges and present Open Door 
professions of Japan, and with careful consideration of 
the interests of all concerned, drew up, in the fulness 
of time, what had been premature in the Harriman 
plan. The famous neutralization proposal offered 



180 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Russia her desired opportunity of escape from Japan, 
and it gave Japan a final opportunity to justify her 
many pledges, to realize the restrictions of European 
aggression in China, and promote the unrivaled oppor- 
tunities for commercial and industrial expansion on the 
continent, which our general aid would give. It was 
the next logical step, both in America's Hay policy and 
in the interests of the rights of the powers, for the 
preservation of the Open Door and the integrity and 
sovereignty of China. 

Political secrets from behind the scenes in Japan, 
Russia, and England tell the story from this point. 
In her solitary fight for the Open Door and the preser- 
vation of China, the most important consideration for 
America appeared to be the attitude of Europe, 
especially of Japan's ally, Great Britain. To her, as 
a great world power and Japan's ally, America first 
turned in her disinterested effort to solve the Man- 
churian question. On November 6, 1909, the neu- 
tralization proposal was submitted to her, with the 
implied understanding that it would elicit from Great 
Britain an indication of the probable attitude of Japan, 
between whom and herself complete confidence and 
interchange of information and official views on all 
things vitally affecting their mutual interests in Asia 
were provided by covenant. 

After consideration, Britain returned a favorable 
reply, adhering in principle to the proposal, and by 
her correspondence conveying the decided impression 
in Washington that the proposal would be considered 
regular if America desired to go further. 

Therefore, our Government assumed that Japan 
was acquainted with its intentions, and considered 
that she had not only not offered any legal objection, 



POLITICAL SECRETS 181 

but had not urged physical obstacles or given any dis- 
couragements. But in order to satisfy any doubts in 
the matter, by giving time for possible opposition to 
develop at Tokio, St. Petersburg, at Paris, or even in 
London, Secretary Knox waited more than one month 
before proceeding with the identical proposal to the 
powers. 

On December 16, 1909, after forty days, America 
submitted the proposal in Tokio, about the same time 
(allowing for official convenience) in St. Petersburg, 
and in Paris, London, and Berlin. It then developed 
that far from being accepted as a regular diplomatic 
proceeding, it was regarded officially by the Man- 
churian allies as unusual and irregular. 

Something had happened. Ere Christmas arrived, 
a complete plan was formulated between St. Peters- 
burg and Tokio. The exchange of correspondence 
extended to London and Paris, and even to Berlin, 
where Germany, from the cue it had taken from these 
activities of the Manchurian allies, was able to frame 
its reply to America with reference to the fate held in 
store for the proposal by the allies. America had not 
gone against Japan alone; she had gone against four 
powers. 

The delicate balance of the world's affairs at that 
time, as centered in Manchuria and East Asia, is 
shown by what happened. A fixed program to extin- 
guish the proposal was agreed to in St. Petersburg 
(Japan still went to Russia), embracing three provisions : 
first, the proposal to be rejected on a date to be deter- 
mined after its exposure in the press, and after inform- 
ing China of its defeat, in identical notes, by Russia 
and Japan to the American Government; second, 
Japan (as the paramount power in Asia) to inform 



182 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

China of America's defeat in her plan, and to deal with 
China for her complicity in it; third, Russia to com- 
municate the proposal to the press, either at St. Peters- 
burg or Peking. 

By this arrangement, Japan allowed Russia tech- 
nically to exonerate herself from the imputation of 
having previously entertained the idea of any such 
project; it exacted from Russia first recognition of 
Japan in the latter's new policy of empire, as the para- 
mount nation in East Asia; and closed Russia's 
mouth against complaining of Japan's openly bullying 
her and dominating the Manchurian allies. It gave 
to their action the appearance of united policy. 

Britain and France, the corresponding allies, were 
to hold aloof. No recognized communications were 
to be sent to Peking, except by Russia and Japan to 
their ministers, and these ministers were not to discuss 
matters with each other. At Christmas, they received 
instructions to this effect, and also that they were not to 
discuss matters with the French and British ministers. 

On January 5, 1910, Russia let loose the proposal 
to the press at St. Petersburg. A fortnight was allowed 
for press discussion, to air the matter. A newspaper 
ebullition followed, as I have shown, especially in 
Japan. Obstacles to the proposal, particularly the 
sensibilities of the two powers, Russia and Japan, were 
exaggerated, and especially in Japan was feeling aroused 
— the main object of publicity on Japan's part, where 
every public man of importance expressed opposition 
to the proposal. America was held up to ridicule, and 
a date was selected by Japan and Russia for formal 
rejection of the proposal. 

On January 20, 1910, Japan performed her self-ap- 
pointed task of dealing with China in the matter, 



POLITICAL SECRETS 183 

as I have shown, and then it appeared that the twenty- 
second of January was the date set for declining. The 
prearranged notes of rejection were that day handed 
to America at Washington. 

Britain, on the face of things, had taken one of two 
courses. She had either shunned Japan in the matter, 
through timidity, contrary to America's anticipations 
and permitted by the terms of the Anglo-Japanese 
alliance, and as America believed she had done, or she 
deferred to Japan's wish for the defeat of the proposal 
so as to discourage American activities with reference 
to the Open Door, to the maintenance of which she 
was pledged. The charitable view taken in Washing- 
ton was that Britain used her technical position to avoid 
her responsibility in the matter of the Open Door. 
She accepted an opportunity for abating the active 
principle of the Open Door, — which, interpreted with 
reference to China's rights, was irksome to herself, as 
an ally of Japan, and to the three other allies, — and 
for widening the existing breach between Japan and 
America. As may be seen, this would work to her 
advantage as well as our own should the interests of 
the two countries come to a final arbitrament in the 
Pacific. But the fact is that Great Britain was not 
prepared to oppose Japan. She was in hardly a better 
position on the south than Russia was on the north. 
And we were learning that the relations, even of allies, 
in the world politics of Manchuria, were anything but 
easy. 

The public, as represented by the press generally 
throughout the world, showed lack of knowledge of 
these affairs. Perhaps the most important thing of 
all, in connection with the future, was overlooked en- 
tirely. Russia's anxiety was to know how far our 



184 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

policy would be supported in whatever it might lead 
us into. The neutralization proposal had weaknesses 
I have not mentioned. The opportunity which it gave 
to Japan to make good her pledges embarrassed and 
angered Japan. And, since her contrary policy had 
been determined upon, she had lost Ito in Manchuria, 
an episode not calculated to modify her exasperation 
at us. It was bungled in London : it was not reason- 
able, in view of her weak and equivocal position in 
China, and the world tension over these affairs, to 
depend upon Great Britain's sounding Japan. It was 
not reasonable to take Russia's approval for granted. 
We should have taken nothing for granted. Under 
Secretary Root, America had neglected China, es- 
pecially Russian Manchuria, and Russia, beset by 
Japan, felt that to accept our proposal would be to 
lean on a broken reed. Nevertheless, up to the very 
eve of January 5, 1910, when she made public the con- 
tents of our proposal, Russia asked for assurances that 
the United States would take whatever measures were 
necessary to carry out the principles involved in the 
proposal, if it were accepted. She was favorable to it, 
she was opposed to closer relations with Japan, and 
rather than that looked to an alliance through China 
and the Open Door powers. Had she received a meas- 
ure of material support, she would have joined us, and 
the story of East Asia would again have been rewritten. 
But by this time Japan's Ambassador, Motono, had 
won over Iswolsky, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
and, the party of Kokovtseff being discredited by the 
tension injected into the situation by our Harbin policy, 
Ito's death, our bungling diplomacy, and other con- 
siderations, on July 4, 1910, after four years of unavail- 
ing denial of Japan, Russia signed with her an agree- 



POLITICAL SECRETS 185 

ment by which she surrendered her voluntary right to 
dispose of her railway, and covenanted to preserve the 
status quo. The paramount need of a separation of 
Russia and Japan was defeated in a "predatory pact", 
based on "Article VI", and all other claims to special 
rights of Russia and Japan in China, and looking to the 
immediate partition of territories in Northern China. 
In this pact were united all the frontier powers of 
China, known as the Manchurian allies. It showed 
the conquest of the European diplomatic powers by 
Japan, and the cementing of their joint policy in 
opposition to the principles of the Open Door. And 
Japan paid her respects to us badly by the selection 
of the day on which the agreement was signed. 



CHAPTER XI 

Japan's First Victory 

This was Japan's first victory. The life of the 
Open Door and of John Hay's work was at its lowest 
ebb. 

The apparent importance of Japan's diplomatic vic- 
tory over America in the foremost political doctrine in 
world affairs, especially when viewed with reference to 
the humble position Japan had among the powers 
before the war, when Russia, France, and Germany 
had bulldozed her out of lower Manchuria, was colossal. 
Events have shown that by this Japan had us virtually 
eliminated from China for years. In iive years she 
had rendered Hay's policy nearly obsolete. America, 
as a political influence in Asia, was hors de combat. 

The most delicate subject in America's foreign rela- 
tions since 1909 has been the neutralization proposal. 
How to restore confidence with Russia and Japan was 
a question with which President Taft and Secretary 
Knox wrestled for more than a year. And their suc- 
cessors tackled it. Lack of confidence borders danger- 
ously on hostility and war. No admitted explanation 
of Britain's part in that diplomatic incident, so far as 
can be found out, has ever been made to Japan, to 
Russia, or to France. They were carrying all they 
could bear in their own troubles, and still are. No 

186 



JAPAN'S FIRST VICTORY 187 

challenge could provoke the Taft Government to ex- 
plain its diplomacy with respect to that measure, 
which, if done, might have been misunderstood by all 
our political opponents. In view of Britain's ap- 
parently helpless infidelity to her Open Door pledges 
to us, as against her fidelity to Japan, she was not 
likely to go out of her way to set Japan, Russia, and 
France right in the matter of America's position and 
efforts. We had to shoulder the wages of our own sin 
of bad management. In 1910, the Government at 
Washington was still hoping that an opportunity would 
present itself to allow an explanation to be made. 

But the breaking down of our position during several 
years could not be remedied now. There were insidious 
leaks left uncovered in the past that could not be so 
unceremoniously stopped. And in this low ebb of the 
Open Door came revolution to give it perhaps its final 
blow, by upsetting the currency loan. The action of 
the special finance commissioner, Sheng Hsuan-huai, 
who was one of China's earliest advocates of a currency 
system, sound money, and of modern finance for China, 
in pressing the loan policy in the face of such misguided 
revolutionary opposition as he encountered, showed 
how urgent China's ablest and best informed officials 
regarded the questions of reform, and of strengthening 
the central government by increasing its powers and 
revenues. On the other hand, the action of Na Tung 
in opposing the signing of both of the loans, due to the 
representations of Japan regarding the danger of a 
further extension of Western influence in East Asia, 
made especially to him, indicated an apprehension on 
the part of one of the highest Manchu officials of the 
political dangers of the Government's loan policy. 
Japan was armed cap-a-pie for the loan contest. 



188 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

As the process of revolution continually going on in 
East Asia is the result of Western contact, and of West- 
ern influences largely traceable to America, as pointed 
out by eminent Japanese, it is natural that upheavals 
dangerous to the plans of Japan for dominating East 
Asia should be charged by her against us. Consider- 
ing the extensive activities and interests of Japan in 
China, it is also natural that Japan should consider 
our two countries as the principal figures in China's 
modern revolutionary rebellions. 

In October, 1910, the revolution broke. It was a 
grave situation for Japan's plan of empire, but she 
entered this crisis with greater prestige than she had 
ever before exercised. Her diplomatic stride after 
eight years was apparently still lengthening. She 
found not only her European allies, but the American 
Government, agreed as to the advisability of the con- 
tinuance of the monarchical system in China. But the 
revolutionary movement was moving in the direction 
of a republic, as exemplified in the American system. 
This was the result of the movement which Japan had 
abetted through Na Tung and the revolutionary ele- 
ment, in directly opposing the currency loan and the 
Western influences which would be introduced into 
China through them. 

In April-May, 1911, the Japanese press attacked 
the loan. The Hochi called it "a plotting loan" and 
said: "We fail to see how America can rid herself of 
the charge that she has been guilty of tricky diplo- 
macy, which can but induce us to expand our navy. 
If we do this, America will be in no position to protest, 
because if we cannot become a continental power we 
must become a maritime one." The Yomiuri char- 
acterized the consummation of the loan by the four 



JAPAN'S FIRST VICTORY 189 

powers a failure of Japanese diplomacy and a blunder 
which would call for "concerted action on the part of 
Japan and Russia to rectify." An interview attributed 
to a Japanese diplomat described the loan as "the inso- 
lent action taken by China and the four powers against 
Japan in Manchuria." The Mainichi, by calling it the 
"irretrievable blunders of our Foreign Office authori- 
ties", focused Japanese opinion that American diplo- 
macy had defeated Japanese. 

On May 29, Japan and Russia asked to be taken 
into the loan, and it did not come up again until the 
revolutionary rebellion in China was reaching its con- 
clusion. And Japan was ready for it, as she had 
always been : Japanese diplomacy was by no means 
the delinquent the savage public in Japan made it out 
to be. After "taking stock", Japan, in February, 
1912, made overtures to the Republican Government 
established on the Yangtse River. Seeing the immi- 
nent possibility of a republic in China, she proposed 
indirectly to the Republican Government at Nanking to 
supply it with arms and munitions, and to build up its 
army and navy and provide it with funds, on the 
security of the minerals and steel works adjacent to 
Hankow. She had taken a leaf from America's book 
of loan enterprise in China. 

As the republic was verging on bankruptcy, and 
might be forced to capitulate to Japanese overtures, 
the circumstances were communicated to Washington, 
and through the good offices of the United States and 
Great Britain, a compromise between the North and 
the South was arranged in China, and Japan's scheme 
for profiting by the revolution failed. 

Knox entered upon a final great effort. In 1912, 
the Anglo-Japanese and Franco-Russian allies, having 



190 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

now become the four Manchurian allies associated for 
the remaking of international relations in East Asia, 
Central Asia, and Europe, we saw that the mutual 
interests of the powers in East Asia, and the preserva- 
tion of China, must be based upon rearrangement and 
readjustment, to the interests of the Manchurian allies, 
of the Open Door principles. 

In August, Japan and Russia were admitted to the 
currency loan which now became a currency, adminis- 
tration, and industry loan, for reform in these three 
directions and involved not less than three hundred 
million dollars. Six powers thus united in a revision 
of the principles of the Open Door presented by us and 
devised on the immemorial principles of our intercourse 
with all powers in China, both those of the Open Door 
and of special interests. 

The coalition of the six powers was based on the 
principle that the prosperity and development of China 
were the source of their best interests there, and it 
provided loans to China for developing her resources 
and making competent her administration. It in- 
volved associate supervision in cooperation with China 
of the work of development and administration. It 
had the great advantage over the menacing wild-cat 
system of the past known as the "gun-boat policy", 
and that which had lately grown up, known as "special 
rights", in that it provided legality and control in the 
interference in China's internal affairs, while the worst 
that justly could be said against it was that it promised 
to China such benefits as the administration under 
Lord Cromer had conferred upon Egypt in the financial 
and industrial direction of that country, or the rehabili- 
tation of Turkey by the commission method. 

But we had come upon a new era. The revolution 



JAPAN'S FIRST VICTORY 191 

which descended upon China, sweeping away the 
Manchu monarchy and replacing it with a republic, 
had saved Japan's plan of empire from the Six-Power 
Loan. It had given time for an expression of resent- 
ment against finance and capital and the so-called 
" money power" in the United States, and the election 
of a new government to repudiate the means secured 
by the happy coalition of the six powers for upholding 
the Open Door policy and saving China. 



CHAPTER XII 

America's Retreat 

The predatory powers of Europe and Asia were now 
"traveling in packs" on the Pacific. The "predatory 
pact", signed at Japan's instance on our national birth- 
day, augured ill for American equal rights of commerce 
and trade, as had the revolution. We were already 
slipping rapidly backwards when the newly elected 
President in Washington gave to our Open Door efforts 
the last kick. Without questioning the motives and 
good faith of any one concerned, it can be said that 
on March 18, 1913, President Wilson gave the death 
blow to the defense and salvation of the principles of 
the Open Door doctrine, and to our financial and indus- 
trial enterprises for the protection of our commerce in 
China, by withdrawing support of the international 
loan and repudiating our own Government's position. 
The President's words were : 

"The conditions of the loan seem to us to touch very 
nearly the administrative independence of China itself ; 
and the Administration does not feel that it ought, 
even by implication, to be party to those conditions. 
The responsibility on its part which would be implied 
in requesting the bankers to undertake the loan might 
conceivably go the length in some unhappy contin- 
gency of forcible interference in the financial and even 

192 



AMERICA'S RETREAT 193 

the political affairs of that great Oriental State, just 
now awakening to a consciousness of its power and of 
its obligations to its people. The conditions include 
not only the pledging of particular taxes, some of them 
antiquated and burdensome, to secure the loan, but 
also the administration of those taxes by foreign agents. 

"The responsibility on the part of our Government 
implied in the encouragement of a loan thus secured 
and administered is plain enough, and is obnoxious to 
the principles upon which the Government of our 
people rests. 

"The Government of the United States is not only 
willing but earnestly desirous of aiding the great 
Chinese people in every way that is consistent with 
their untrammeled development and its own immemorial 
principles. The awakening of the people of China to a 
consciousness of their possibilities under free govern- 
ment is the most significant, if not the most momen- 
tous, event of our generation." 

President Wilson's declaration was the most im- 
portant policy advanced by our Government since the 
declarations of 1900 secured by it from the powers, 
again setting up the Open Door doctrine. It traversed 
at least the practice respecting East Asia of every 
other President since Polk. Yet he did not hesitate. 
In rights and advantages secured, that constituted a 
great asset to the nation, he took no account of the 
Government, of Congress. He assumed that what 
had accrued by the acts of the President and Cabinet 
could be flung away by it. He answered for every- 
body. 

On January 26, 1914, in New York, Secretary Bryan 
made an authorized official explanation of President 
AYilson's reversal of the Government's policy respect- 



194 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

ing the loan and the means taken for defending the 
principles of the Open Door through industrial develop- 
ment and control of the physical forces that were direct- 
ing China's fate. Said he : 

"The President's policy contemplates the formation 
of an environment which will encourage the growth of 
all that is good . . . the Government, while it cannot 
create trade, can give to trade an environment in 
which it can develop. ... If by a cultivation of 
higher standards of morals we can assist any people 
anywhere to improve their moral standards, we shall 
not be without our reward. 

" Whether we view the world, therefore, from a purely 
material standpoint or from the standpoint of religion, 
we must, if our force of reason is intelligent, reach the 
same conclusions, viz., that we only build enduringly 
when we endeavor to raise the level upon which we all 
stand." 

An honest and able effort was made by the hearers 
of these words to know and realize what they meant, 
and concurrence of the best opinion resulted in the 
conviction that the Secretary, and before him the 
President, meant that promotion of the material 
interests of our country represented by trade with, and 
industrial development in, China had its basis in the 
securing first of the moral welfare of the Chinese people. 
In this Secretary Bryan traversed the principles upon 
which had acted our Secretaries of State who preceded 
him back to John C. Calhoun, notably William H. 
Seward, who forty-four years before, at Hongkong, on 
the scene of the first cooperation of missionary, moral, 
and religious and commercial enterprise for the pro- 
motion of commerce and the welfare of the Chinese 
people said : 



AMERICA'S RETREAT 195 

"The Christian religion, for its acceptance, involves 
some intellectual and social advancement, which can 
only be effected through international commerce. I 
look therefore chiefly to commerce for the regeneration 
of China — that commerce to come across the Ameri- 
can Continent and the Pacific Ocean." 

In referring to the forces which guaranteed the con- 
tinuance and increase of that commerce, Seward named 
the material necessities first, and said there was "no 
assignable measure to the future expansions of the 
intercontinental regenerating commerce." Through 
commerce, Seward saw China's salvation. Wilson 
had got back to Root's course of drifting, respecting 
the Pacific. 

The defects of President Wilson's statement as show- 
ing our relations with China and the powers, China's 
position then, and her abject condition as the largest 
nation in a now thoroughly sad world, were only too 
evident. The course of action ever had led to con- 
flict and "forcible interference." Taxes ever have 
been "antiquated and burdensome." All taxes on 
foreign commerce, part on native commerce, and all 
postal revenues in China were administered by foreign 
agents. The practical conditions of China's problems 
might be obnoxious, but they had not deterred our 
missionaries, traders, and financiers from needful and 
essential efforts to better them. The "untrammeled 
development" of the Chinese people had never had 
any existence ; it was and is something unknown, and 
the fact that there was no prospect of it was the cause 
of the financial measures of safety and progress devised 
by the governments, in the Six-Power Loan. China's 
development was entirely due to pressure of the West 
and the operation of the principles of the Open Door 



196 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

and of extraterritoriality and the consistent interfer- 
ence and influencing of China's intimate internal and 
external affairs by foreign powers, including the United 
States. 

The "immemorial principles" of our Government in 
its relations to China and the powers had been those 
of intelligent acceptance of the practical conditions 
and inevitable facts of extraterritoriality, which we had 
steadily practiced since not later than July, 1844, and 
in principle since 1821. Extraterritoriality as practiced 
in China by first treaty sanction of the United States 
for seventy-one years was in effect the supreme law 
of interference in China's affairs, especially her private 
internal affairs. They were not only the steel, con- 
crete, and granite sills of all China's commercial and 
industrial development, but they underlay the develop- 
ment of Siam, they supplied the modern foundations 
of the Empire of Japan, while our vast missionary 
establishment in China, involving more wealth and 
exerting a more extensive benevolence and practical 
support to the Chinese people than all other missions 
in China combined, had as its cornerstone the exercise 
of rights alienated from China, gripping her innermost 
vitals, and forming the widest of all scars across her 
corporal sovereignty. 

But we did not intend that the exercise of inter- 
ference in the form of extraterritoriality should be fol- 
lowed by the alienation of territory and the transfer 
of administration to foreign powers. Now that it had 
come, the way was parted, and those friends of China 
who have placed their faith upon our Government 
could prepare for a last look at what they had stood 
for and what our Government had stood for, because 
China's treaties with all the powers, and all of her 



AMERICA'S RETREAT 197 

treaties with the powers, except perhaps only Japan, 
molded by us to enclose China, were turning to scraps 
of paper. 

Our movement into foreign affairs after the Revolu- 
tionary War was so rapid that Washington's words 
were hardly cold before we were involved in the Pacific 
in the course of things which he prescribed in the 
Atlantic. Almost at once we were involved, as we 
now know was inevitable. We shunned the Atlantic, 
and we have tried to ignore the Pacific, and this is the 
result — the rebound of what has been regarded as 
our immemorial principles. In contrast to the views 
of the administration on the wisdom of its policy, the 
moral interests at stake, represented in our missions 
in China, immediately appealed to Washington for in- 
tervention. Two missionary commissions from China 
visited Washington. Their whole need was the Six- 
power Loan, the natural operation of the combined 
forces of the material interests of the great powers. 
The theory and ideal of President Wilson and Secre- 
tary Bryan were found to have no more weight in East 
Asia than in Belgium. The practical affairs that were 
deciding the future of China and the interests of all 
powers there were the material interests of Japan, 
directed by diplomacy, and enforced by the moral and 
military support of her allies. 

A policy that forced Secretary Root to abandon 
contention against Russia's administration of Harbin, 
and Secretary Knox to acquiesce in Russian and 
Japanese claims to sovereign authority in the railway 
zones of Manchuria, the abandonment of our treaties 
with Korea, of our railway concessions north of the 
Great Wall, the alienation of Outer Mongolia, which 
Russia forcibly accomplished immediately after her 



198 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

predatory pact with Japan, and forcible demands of 
extension of special rights in agreement with a policy 
based on principles the opposite of those of the Open 
Door and equal rights, — a policy that aims at and 
seeks the undermining of all treaties in China, and their 
rewriting as those with Korea are rewritten, and of 
Manchuria as well, — left nothing of our rights in 
China unscathed. 

When the loan policy of European nations began to 
oppress American interests in China, both American 
industry and the American Government were repentant 
of the collapse of American finance in China in 1905, 
when the Hankow-Canton Railway concession was 
given up. The Government then sounded the finan- 
ciers on means for the protection of American trade in 
China. A financial alliance was formed by Jacob H. 
Schiff and others in cooperation with J. Pierpont Mor- 
gan, Sr., by which the Kuhn-Loeb-Rockefeller and 
J. P. Morgan and Company financiers enlisted to sup- 
port the Government. When the Government was 
committed to the loan policy, and was already well 
along in those adventures, Schiff said: "We did not 
desire this business. We undertook it at the request of 
the Government. I have impressed upon our repre- 
sentatives that in their work in China they are to 
remember that money is not our main object, but that 
first of all we are working for the preservation of the 
market for our industries. And I think Mr. Morgan 
has said the same." 

At that time it was not only a role which they had 
not sought, but they did not seem to regard it as one 
in which, as bankers, they were likely to win great 
profits. The profits in view were those which came 
from the expenditure of the loan money, and this came 



AMERICA'S RETREAT 199 

to the manufacturers and traders of the country supply- 
ing the loan, who paid their own price for the financial 
services of the bankers. The system was exactly 
suited to conditions, and guaranteed a position of 
equality for American trade in competition with that 
of other nations in China. The Hukuang Loan, the 
Kinchou-Aigun Loan Contract, and the Currency Loan, 
with the auxiliary Six-Power Loan, ere President Wil- 
son withdrew government support, stood as the redemp- 
tion of American rights of trade in China and East Asia. 
American industry and finance were indebted to the 
Government for placing them in a position for waging 
the commercial battle in the Pacific, and the Govern- 
ment was indebted to American finance and industry 
for putting its diplomacy on its feet. The activity of 
America was, primarily, an effort to repair the dangers 
due to neglect in the past, and to fortify American 
interests and the Open Door. The latter, weakened 
through a period of years, was undermined. Our object 
was to build up the sense of mutual welfare among the 
powers throughout the great industrial regions of China, 
and the development of Chinese self-reliance and self- 
help ; and as there could be no permanent Open Door 
without a competent China, to encourage self-com- 
petence and self-defense. 

"What I want to see," said President Taft, "is that 
China develop her military strength and prowess so 
she can fight. What we want, is that China should be 
free in her own country. When she wants to build 
railways in her own territory, I don't see why she 
shouldn't build them. To have those powers who 
obstruct her say she cannot, is intolerable. I cannot 
tolerate that idea. I am very much interested in the 
development of China. I don't care how she develops, 



200 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

but I want her to develop, and so that we will have a 
part in that development. I was interested in China 
when I was out there, and I wanted to do something 
for her. When Mr. Knox came to the State Depart- 
ment, I told him I wanted special attention given to 
China. The trade out there is going to be very im- 
portant to us. We will gain more and more as time 
goes on, and we must act so as to get our share. We 
are investing money that will bring returns. We have 
been criticized for backing Wall Street, but why 
shouldn't we? Wall Street is our capital." 

Speaking of the neutralization proposal which we 
offered as a solution of the great question of the powers 
in East Asia, Secretary Knox said: "I believe they 
will come to that yet. Although it was declined, it 
was a great proposal, and a great plan. Germany 
accepted it. Although Russia and Japan refused it, 
they admitted that it might be acceptable at a future 
time." 

America's object of improving the mutual interests 
of the powers and of China through the improvement 
of China's finances and the growth of her industrial 
wealth was perfectly understood by Japan, and also by 
her allies. In the carrying out of this program, Japan's 
opportunities were relatively greater than were those 
of any other outside power, and she would have reaped 
a relatively greater advantage. Progress and develop- 
ment to make China and East Asia generally strong 
and prosperous, so that it would be safe from further 
European aggression, was what Japan had professed 
to stand for. But her resentment was colossal, out 
of all proportion to the relatively small and hitherto 
modest nation which she had been up to this time. 
This was the newest Japan. 



AMERICA'S RETREAT 201 

These things shaped a situation that was a powerful 
condemnation of our manner of party administration 
in foreign affairs, which, by contrary opinion, in- 
difference, incapacity, ignorance, cross-purposes or 
viciousness, makes those affairs shuttlecocks of do- 
mestic politics. But they were not so acute a damna- 
tion as that which was silently administered by the 
great business interests involved. Party administra- 
tions whose cabinet positions, often in the gravest 
moments, are at the mercy of their politicians, can up- 
set precedents, repudiate undertakings, reverse policies. 
But big business, whose trusts must be upheld with 
integrity under numbers of presidents in succession, 
under long-term bonds or lease contracts, often for 
ninety-nine years, can be neither irresponsible nor 
fickle. In this instance, forecasting the consequences 
from a government elected on the issue of the evil of the 
" money power " and of big business, on June 1, 1912, 
six months before rotation in administration at Wash- 
ington, the American banking group covenanted with 
the European groups to stand together for five years, 
and thus secured European protection in China, for 
American interests for which they were already trus- 
tees, and of which their own government, as I have 
shown, thereafter as certainly washed its hands as 
though it had been decreed by an inexorable fate. 

From 1834, when our first envoy to East Asia, Ed- 
mund Roberts, complained of the Government's neg- 
lect to protect American trade in East Asia, resulting 
in the formation soon after of our "India Squadron", 
until after the Civil War, there were American officers 
and statesmen who paid the strictest attention to for- 
eign interests, keeping watch over the growth of those 
great questions in East Asia and the Pacific which we 



202 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

have in the twentieth century. It seemed now that 
the anxiety expressed by Seward, 1852, in the Senate 
Chamber over the bier of Henry Clay was justified, 
when he said: "The great lights of the Senate have 
set. . . . Who among us is equal to these mighty 
questions ? I fear there are none." 

With Europe, and all the problems of the world, 
come to the Pacific, it is a question whether the suc- 
cessors of Fillmore, Seward, McKinley, and Hay are 
the statesmen "equal to these mighty questions" to 
whom Seward referred. 



CHAPTER XIII 

China's Turn 

On August 1, 1914, the world went to war. Almost 
it might be said a new era began, sprung from events 
which, as I have said, are the fiery, molten metal of 
immediate Pacific history. The Pacific was congested 
with the world's affairs, like the Atlantic. The Euro- 
pean nations had their plans and alliances all made, 
and diplomacy removed from the West to take up its 
abode in Tokio. Going to war with Germany and her 
ally, as provided by the Anglo-Japanese alliance, Japan 
took Germany's outposts in East Asia. Following the 
fall of Germany's principal defenses at Kiaochou, and 
finding herself in possession of the larger part of Ger- 
man interests in Shantung, Japan seized her oppor- 
tunity in the absence of all rivals, save ourselves, and 
fell upon China, as in the night. 

Russia had gone far, after the "predatory pact", in 
alienating Outer Mongolia. Japan undertook to re- 
make the Pacific and East Asia. 

Europe had no time for the consideration of the 
situation, and the news fell unheard and unappreciated 
in America, because the country and the press were in 
a hyphenated condition over the World War, and Japan 
had taken good care to conceal her prospective action. 
The American correspondents of both the Chinese 

203 



204 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

and Japanese capitals were successfully shepherded in 
Tokio, where, under the war censorship, no news could 
be sent out. Her ambassadors were made to deny the 
truth, and to reassure the governments at London and 
Washington. 

The Associated Press Peking correspondent left 
Japan with the knowledge of the situation, in haste for 
Peking, and on February 11, 1915, the Associated 
Press of New York, the London Times, and the Chicago 
Daily News, were offered a "scoop" of the great news 
of Japan's demands upon China, which had actually 
forced themselves out of Peking. 

The London Times printed a brief summary. The 
Associated Press, representing more than eight hun- 
dred of our newspapers, questioned the incredible news 
and held it up a week, and in all the world only the 
Chicago Herald, February 18, was bold enough to print 
the text of Japan's demands. The Washington Post 
mentioned it, but it was March 31 before the Asso- 
ciated Press published the full text of Japan's program 
for remaking the Pacific Hemisphere. The Govern- 
ment at Washington placed a taboo on the subject 
and buried it. China had given the State Department 
the text of Japan's demands, but on conditions of 
secrecy, so that our Government was not alone respon- 
sible that we did not know. 

There was a crisis in the political and news world. 
And it was not the least of its events that the Asso- 
ciated Press correspondent at Peking, humiliated by 
the distrust of his work and motives, resigned and 
withdrew from the Associated Press service. The situa- 
tion called for a new consideration of Japanese affairs. 
The testimony of her Foreign Office showed that Japan's 
diplomacy was based on two things : the foreign 



CHINA'S TURN 205 

evils that flooded Japan the first ten years the country 
was open to foreign intercourse; and the abuse of in- 
ternational right and justice by Russia, Germany, and 
France in depriving her of the Liaotung Peninsula in 
Manchuria, 1896, after her war with China. 

It took Japan more than forty years to eradicate 
the foreign evils that the floodgates of the Perry 
Treaty admitted in ten. It is among the things which 
make up the happy recollections of the two countries 
that we helped her. Through the aid of our advisers, 
and during the life in Japan of the last of them, Henry 
Willard Denison, and by his multitudinous works in 
Japan, they were all removed except the claim of 
exemption from taxation of certain foreign property in 
Yokohama, on which matter he was working at his 
death. We helped Japan to recover control of her 
commerce, to recover jurisdiction over foreigners sur- 
rendered in her first treaties, and to correct all the in- 
equalities in all her relations with foreigners, by which 
her position before Western nations had been that of 
an inferior. Some were unfair concessions ; some 
special rights, whose privileged proprietors had become 
fastened like barnacles upon the State, and were the 
cause of complications with foreign powers. With our 
help they were pried off like barnacles until the ship of 
state was free, and Japan had it to herself. 

Then the inequalities put upon her by Russia, Ger- 
many, and France she quickly adjusted by successful 
war with Russia, — in which our help, rendered through 
Denison and Roosevelt and our bankers, notably 
Jacob H. Schiff, who found half her borrowed war 
money, was preeminent, — and also by the assault 
against German Kiaochou. 

Japan then felt the call to "fulfill her destiny." 



206 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

That was, to her, the achievement of the next most 
desirable thing, namely, the prying loose from East 
Asia of the great powers as she had pried off the bar- 
nacles of favored foreigners and special privileges from 
her own administration. If she could do so, inter- 
national affairs in East Asia would be free from unwel- 
come intervention and feel their freedom, even as 
national affairs in Japan were free. Japan would then 
have East Asia essentially to herself ; she would be no 
less than leader. 

This was Japan's present work. That she was 
applying the simple rule to the powers which she applied 
to her concessionaires and other unwelcome ones, and 
against Russia, and that the rule of special right which 
had been tried against her she was practising against 
China, though, as Okuma then said, for "permanent 
peace and good understanding", there can be no doubt. 
There is no contrary evidence. It is the substance of 
Japanese oft-professed "destiny." 

In all respects Japan's diplomacy since 1905, by 
which she found herself with the strongest allies in the 
world standing in the open with no rival and no visible 
enemy worthy the name of an antagonist, may be 
found to be the masterpiece of statesmanship of this 
century. 

There was a day when Japan knew not diplomacy. 
In 1895, the conformation of the international world 
molded in the chancelleries of the great powers was 
new to her. International complications were getting 
pretty close when they reached Korea. She was sur- 
rounded, and knew well enough, by the most powerful 
of all human instincts, the military, that the gauntlet 
was down, and she would have to fight her way out. 
She chose the land route, for which she was prepared 



CHINA'S TURN 207 

— yet not prepared. In the conflict with her first 
opponent, China, she did not overlook the European 
powers in the background, but in her haste to seize 
territory she neglected to neutralize them. Conse- 
quently she had to submit to a revision by Russia, 
Germany, and France of her peace treaty with China. 
Japan had overlooked something. It was diplomacy. 
It was a shock ; few but sympathized with her. 

The nicety with which Japan landed on her feet in 
the present circumstances proved that diplomacy, the 
lost animal of that flock which she had gathered up 
and brought home from Western civilization in the 
past, had been found. After the Japan-China War 
she brought the animal home and tied him up between 
the Foreign Office and the residence of the late Henry 
Willard Denison, the American adviser. He was looked 
over, and those who love Japan most must admit that, 
black sheep as he was, Japan wickedly adopted him. 
In the next war, 1904-1905, Japan had fortified herself 
with an ally, Great Britain, and isolated her opponent, 
so that the terms of her martial success when expressed 
in treaty would be final, as they were in Portsmouth. 

Nineteen years after there was no evidence of the 
tyro. Japan's alliances and her diplomacy, in connec- 
tion with the loan or Open Door activity of America, 
especially the neutralization proposal, in all respects 
bear out that statement. She had paid high prices 
for her new position. The four years' process of her 
love-making with Russia was one of the coyest of inter- 
national courtships. Japan's overtures were several 
times most humiliating and excruciating, as at one of 
the embarrassing meetings, where, as I have said, 
Prince Ito, one of the foremost men in the world, was 
coldly assassinated, and died in the presence of the 



208 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Russian envoy. One of the results of her sacrifices 
was that they placed her in the political line-up for 
the approaching European war, all of whose details, 
as also I have shown, were discussed in the field in 
Manchuria in connection with the Russian- Japanese 
War by European military agents, staff officers, and 
journalists and publicists alike. Japan's success in the 
quadruple alliance of Great Britain, Russia, France, 
and Japan was one of the processes by which the 
coalition against Germany and Austria was brought 
about, with Japanese present mastery in China and 
East Asia. 

This was Japan's opportunity to carry Japan's plan 
of empire to Peking. Since Secretary Knox's effort 
of 1909, — awkwardly carried out but heroic, — to 
erase "Article VI", and to remove the solvent that 
was undermining the Open Door doctrine, Japan se- 
cured the July 4, 1910, agreement with Russia for the 
defense of the status quo; and, on the basis that a 
unity of opinion between them constituted the key to 
the China problem, in July, 1912, effected an under- 
standing at St. Petersburg through Katsura for taking 
in hand the destinies of East Asia. Japan had built 
two additional railways in Eastern Manchuria, had 
annexed Korea, which resulted in the alienization by 
Russia of all Outer Mongolia, had secured concessions 
for four railways in Mongolia, together with an exten- 
sion of the lease of the railways carrying the right of 
"sole and exclusive right of administration" of railway 
territories to ninety-nine years. Railway sovereignty, 
as set up by Japan, carried with it control of all com- 
merce and development, and had removed all of Man- 
churia and Eastern Mongolia from that China known 
to us as the theater of the principles of the Open Door, 



CHINA'S TURN 209 

and converted it into a joint sphere of special Japanese- 
Russian rights. 

Now came Japan, in the crisis of the world, with a 
masterful diplomacy and arms, military lord of a help- 
less nation of perhaps three hundred millions of people, 
inhabiting a region in size and wealth of resources and 
in all favorable points second to that of no other people 
or nation, and demanded uncontrolled extension of 
special rights, in five groups of demands. 

Prefacing this with a sincere statement of a desire to 
maintain the peace of East Asia, and under the inten- 
tion of "strengthening the friendly relations existing 
between the two neighboring nations", she required 
the right to dispose of Kiaochou, which she had just 
taken from Germany, concessions for railways and 
mines, the control of railways, mines, and mining 
regions, the extension of territorial and railway leases, 
the lease of land, the right of residence and business of 
all kinds, together with the extension of exterritoriality, 
the veto over railways and over security for loans, 
advisers to the Chinese, the disposition of islands or 
ports, a market for munitions of war, for war and 
arsenal materials and loans, and the right of police 
masters and of advisers to the central government. 

Aside from industrial concessions, loans, leases, and 
police matters, Japan demanded the extension of sov- 
ereignty and exterritoriality exercised by her under 
special rights, in railway zones, and by equality of 
right in treaty ports, to the country at large in Man- 
churia and Eastern Mongolia. She demanded what 
would be joint administration of the whole Japanese 
sphere north of the Great Wall, while under the cir- 
cumstances of her leadership she proposed to place in 
Peking those advisers that could never permit to be 



210 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

wrought for China such achievements as Denison 
wrought for Japan. They would be government agents 
imposed by diplomacy, and their business would be 
necessarily that of loosening the powers from China. 

Japan had disposed of the question of Russia, and of 
us. She was now " handing it " to China. After 
five years she was punishing China for attempting a 
foreign policy, for presuming statesmanship. 

It was better for Japan, if she could manage the 
powers herself, to have them, rather than a Chinese 
foreign policy, in East Asia. And now she could 
manage them, and China also. There existed a com- 
bination of circumstances in the world which gave 
Japan a free hand in the Pacific, unhampered even by 
ourselves. We did nothing. In the withdrawal by 
President Wilson, Japan saw that we were abandoning 
the position of defender of China's integrity, the Open 
Door, and the treaties, and returning to the position 
of their apologist. Russia stood united with Japan by 
their almost innumerable "ententes", "understand- 
ings", "supplementary clauses", "minutes", etc., and 
their allies, behind whom they stood, stood in turn 
behind them. It had been an open question for at 
least six years whether the Open Door doctrine would 
afford any appreciable protection to China in an emer- 
gency. Here was the emergency, and one the like of 
which China never had seen. The only barrier to the 
realization of Japan's demands was the traduced Open 
Door doctrine. 

It is evident that Japan never would have embarked 
so far upon her extensive program if she had not be- 
lieved in a long duration of hostilities. Her action, 
as a commentary on the World War, and upon her 
opinion of the United States as the champion of the 



CHINA'S TURN 211 

principles of equal rights of all nations in China, and 
the integrity of China's territory and the preservation 
of her sovereignty within it, was no less illuminating 
than in what it revealed of how immense was the force 
of the world, marshaled by Japan, in shaping affairs 
the most vital to us of all possible issues in this world. 
Japan fulfilled the terms of the Root-Takahira agree- 
ment and of internationally written paper which she 
had signed that is measured by weight rather than 
counted, and paid her respects to the great powers who 
had been signatories in it with her, by handing them 
an excerpt of her demands upon the Chinese Govern- 
ment numbering three hundred and twenty-six words. 
The full text of her demands handed to China, amount- 
ing to one thousand and thirteen words, is as follows : 

Group I 

The Japanese Government and the Chinese Government, 
being desirous of maintaining the peace of Eastern Asia and 
of further strengthening the friendly relations existing be- 
tween the two neighboring nations, agree to the following 
articles : 

Article 1. The Chinese Government agrees that when the 
Japanese Government hereafter approaches the German 
Government for the transfer of all rights and privileges 
of whatever nature enjoyed by Germany in the Province 
of Shantung, whether secured by treaty or in any other 
manner, China will give her full assent thereto. 
Article 2. The Chinese Government agrees that w T ithin the 
Province of Shantung and along its sea border no terri- 
tory or island or land of any name or nature shall be 
ceded or leased to any third power. 
Article 3. The Chinese Government consents to Japan's 
building a railway from Chefoo to Lungkow to join the 
Kiaochou-Chinanfu Railway. 



212 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Article 4. The Chinese Government agrees that for the sake 
of trade and for the residence of foreigners certain im- 
portant places shall be speedily opened in the Province 
of Shantung as treaty ports, such necessary places to be 
jointly decided upon by the two Governments by sepa- 
rate agreement. 

Group II 

The Japanese Government and the Chinese Government, 
since the Chinese Government has always acknowledged the 
specially favorable position enjoyed by Japan in South 
Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia, agree to the following 
articles : 

Article 1. The two contracting powers mutually agree that 
the term of the lease of Port Arthur and the term of lease 
of the South Manchuria and Antung-Mukden Railway 
shall be extended to the period of ninety-nine years. 
Article %. Japanese subjects in South Manchuria and East- 
ern Mongolia in erecting buildings for the purpose of 
trade and manufacture or for farming shall have the 
right to lease or own land so required. 
Article 3. Japanese subjects shall be free to reside and 
travel in South Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia and 
to engage in business and in manufacture of any kind 
whatsoever. 
Article 4. The Chinese Government agrees to grant Japanese 
subjects the right to work mines in South Manchuria 
and Eastern Mongolia, such mining places to be jointly 
decided upon by the two governments. 
Article 5. The Chinese Government agrees that in respect 
of the two following subjects mentioned herein below, 
the Japanese Government's consent shall be first ob- 
tained before action shall be taken : 
(A) Whenever permission is granted to the subject of a 
third power to build a railway or to make a loan with 
a third power for the purpose of building a railway 
in South Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia. 



CHINA'S TURN 213 

(B) Whenever a loan is to be made with a third power 
pledging the local taxes of South Manchuria and 
Eastern Mongolia as security. 
Article 6. The Chinese Government agrees that, if the 
Chinese Government in South Manchuria or Eastern 
Mongolia employs advisers or instructors for political, 
financial, or military purposes, the Japanese Government 
shall first be consulted. 
Article 7. The Chinese Government agrees that the control 
and administration of the Kirin-Changchun Railway 
shall be handed over to the Japanese Government, to 
take effect on the signing of this agreement, the term to 
last for ninety-nine years. 

Group III 

The Japanese Government and the Chinese Government, 
desiring that the Japanese financiers and the Hanyehping 
Company shall have a more direct and closer interest than 
at present, and also desiring that the interests of the two 
nations shall be further advanced, agree to the following 
articles : 

Article 1. The two contracting powers mutually agree that 
when the opportune moment arrives, the Hanyehping 
Company shall be made a joint concern of the two 
nations, and they further agree that without the pre- 
vious consent of Japan, China shall not by her own act 
dispose of the property rights and interests of whatsoever 
nature of the Hanyehping Company, nor cause the said 
company to dispose freely of the same. 
Article 2. The Chinese Government agrees that all other 
mines connected with the Hanyehping Company and 
mines in the neighborhood of mines so connected shall 
not be permitted without the consent of the said Com- 
pany to be worked by other persons outside the said 
Company, and further agrees that in any mining opera- 
tion which directly or indirectly affects the interests of 



214 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

the said Company, the consent of the said Company 
shall first be obtained. 



Group IV 

The Japanese Government and the Chinese Government, 
with the object of effectively protecting the territorial integ- 
rity of China, agree to the following special articles : 

The Chinese Government agrees that no island, port, or 
harbor along the coast shall be ceded or leased to any third 
power. 

Group V 

Article 1. The Chinese Government shall employ forceful 
Japanese as advisers in political, financial, and military 
affairs. 

Article 2. In the interior of China Japanese shall have the 
right of ownership of land for the building of Japanese 
hospitals, churches, and schools. 

Article 3. Since the Japanese Government and the Chinese 
Government have had many cases of dispute between 
Japanese and Chinese police to settle cases, which 
caused no inconsiderable misunderstanding, it is for this 
reason necessary that the police of important places (in 
China) shall be jointly administered (by Japanese and 
Chinese) or that the (Chinese) police department of these 
places shall employ numerous Japanese for the purpose 
of organizing and improving the Chinese police service. 

Article 4. China shall purchase from Japan a fixed ratio of 
the quantity of munitions of war (say above 50 per 
cent) or Japan shall establish in China a jointly worked 
arsenal, Japanese technical experts to be employed and 
Japanese material to be purchased. 

Article 5. China agrees to Japan's right to build a railway 
connecting Wuchang with Kiukiang and Nanchang; 
also a line between Wuchang and Hangchou, and a 
line between Nanchang and Chiaochou. 



CHINA'S TURN 215 

Article 6. China agrees that in the Province of Fukien, 
Japan shall have the right to work mines and build 
railways and to construct harbor works (including dock- 
yards) and in case of employing foreign capital, Japan 
shall be first consulted. 

Article 7. China agrees that Japanese subjects shall have the 
right to propagate Buddhism in China. 

China was in a tight place. The ideal compact for 
her, of the great powers in the Six-Power Loan brought 
about by Knox, she had destroyed by weakness and 
perfidy. She could have closed it at one time by a 
happy agreement of all concerned. But she quibbled 
and lost, with the result that the Western powers were 
practically eliminated, and she was now left to face 
Japan alone. Japan had China in a situation out of 
which there was no escape, and she proceeded to drive 
home a lesson which she had long sought to administer. 

The chief terror to the Chinese, thus caught alone 
with Japan, comes from the guilt of having long played 
the powers against each other and against Japan. The 
mock magnanimity which Japan displayed toward her, 
because of her conspiracies in the past with aliens, 
something worse than gall, brought home to her the 
penalty sensed by Kipling in the lines : 

" The sins ye do by two and two, 
Ye pay for one by one." 

The reproach of truckling to foreigners, which Korea 
mistakenly administered to Japan, Japan effectively 
applied to China. Why did you do these things? You 
were the one who brought exterritoriality upon us; Why 
did you give away these concessions, these ports which we 
hare had to fight to get back for you ? are some of the ques- 
tions China had to listen to from Japan. 



216 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

President Yuan Shih-k'ai had asserted that the year 
1915 would be the crucial year in the history of the re- 
public. Its only friend was the United States. Japan 
was against it as being a canker in a great, weak or- 
ganism. Against the menace of 1915, having been un- 
able to fortify itself with the proceeds of any foreign 
loan, with no allies, without military defense and pro- 
tection, and deprived in everything of the sanction of its 
powerful neighbor and rival, China was left to her one 
weak resource against her enemies — the boycott. 

Realizing that a day of reckoning had come, all Chi- 
nese communities abroad were secretly warned that the 
Government at Peking could not officially countenance 
boycott or open hostility to Japan, but that it expected 
the utmost assistance which China's subjects could 
peacefully exert. How to preserve the Open Door 
and the equality of right which she had guaranteed to 
the powers, when most of them were absent, fighting 
for their lives, and those who were not refused to look 
around, was a large order for China. She, too, was fight- 
ing for her life. Her obligations to the powers, which 
had always been her chief asset in her contentions with 
her enemies, could not provoke the friendly mediation 
of any one of them. China could only gaze at her antag- 
onist, whose most conspicuous feature was Okuma, the 
Japanese Premier. In 1911, when it was shown that 
the revolutionary outbreak in China was going to over- 
throw the Manchu dynasty, this man declared it to be 
the end of China, for incontestable reasons which he 
enumerated. China lacked all the essential elements 
of salvation that had existed in Japan in a similar 
emergency. Her Throne was not a rallying point upon 
which was centered reverent affection, and there was 
no large party or progressive leaders, who, to hereditary 



CHINA'S TURN 217 

prestige, added high intellect, profound foresight, and 
invincible courage. Moreover, she had no class of 
trained officials necessary to create the highly scientific 
organized government of modern times which her con- 
tinued existence demanded, nor did she have the enor- 
mous sums of money with which alone this program 
could be realized. In consequence, China would 
plunge into debt and destruction, said Okuma. 

These views prevailed everywhere in Japan. Henry 
Willard Denison, who was acquainted with the views 
of every important public man in Japan, told me 
shortly before he died that he held this opinion. That 
China considered it an evil day for her when Okuma 
became Premier was testified to by the understanding 
among millions of Chinese that Yuan Shih-k'ai at- 
tempted to arrange an understanding with Okuma be- 
fore his elevation to the premiership. Okuma was a 
popular leader, noisy and astute, cabling his views 
abroad, and it required no imagination to perceive 
what were the sensations of the Peking Government 
when it saw his policy meeting with the popular 
approval, without provoking one important native 
protest. 

Here in America, while the press refused to print 
Japan's demands, China saw it circulating the cabled 
views of Okuma, who said: "As Premier of Japan, I 
have stated and now I again state, to the people of 
America and of the world, that Japan has no ulterior 
motive, no desire to secure more territory, no thought 
of depriving China or other peoples of anything which 
they now possess. My Government and my people 
have given their word and their pledge, which will be 
as honestly kept as Japan always keeps promises." 
Which emphasized to China the fact that Japan erased 



218 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

seven of her different international compacts of the 
years 1895 to 1907, styled treaties, alliances, protocols, 
agreements, arrangements, and conventions, in an- 
nexing Korea ; that Ito declared that Japan would not 
annex Korea; and that any statesman or politician 
who prophesies what his country is going to do, or his 
successors, is ridiculous, and only lets himself in for the 
laughter of posterity. 

Seven weeks after China sought publicity, she saw 
the American press, in printing Japan's demands, 
follow it with the statement by Okuma that "the 
uneasiness and suspicion in the United States in con- 
nection with Japan's negotiations at Peking are based 
on misunderstanding and misinformation scattered 
broadcast by interested mischief-makers." 

"The negotiations between Japan and China are 
nearing a satisfactory conclusion," said Okuma. "I 
am now willing to state publicly that Japan is quite 
confident of the rectitude and good faith of her position. 
Japan is merely seeking to settle outstanding troubles 
and questions in a way looking toward permanent peace 
and good understanding." Without wasting time in 
questioning the good faith of Japan, China might have 
feelingly pointed out that perfect peace and good un- 
derstanding were obtained by the young man and the 
tiger, with the young man inside of the tiger. 

In this most important crisis of years in East Asia, 
threatening to make paralytic the Open Door doctrine, 
our Government did nothing that might embarrass 
Japan. It did nothing that might help China, either. 
And its reasons were these : The first four groups of 
her demands, Japan made public. "Group V" she 
kept secret. But as it was the most important, and 
took away all equality of rights from other nations, it 



CHINA'S TURN 219 

was almost certain to become known before China could 
be made to agree to it. 

When this group of demands became known, and our 
Government made an inquiry with regard to it, Japan 
explained that she did not intend to press for "Group 
V", at which our Government professed itself to be 
satisfied. It "accepted" Japan's explanations, which 
had a remarkable resemblance to that mendacity in 
Japanese diplomatic intercourse which Townsend Har- 
ris named and to which he testified, more than to any- 
thing else. 

As a matter of fact, there was no difference between 
Japan's demanding "Group V" as a part of her mini- 
mum demands, and putting it forward with them as a 
threat and a blind to get China's consent to the other 
groups. There was not only no moral difference, but 
no real difference. She imposed secrecy upon China, 
and badly as China wanted publicity, she was too well 
terrorized to allow us to make Japan's demands known. 
With China's only friend, America, entirely under the 
mental domination of Japan, had China been terrorized 
into accepting her demands outright, there never could 
have been any withdrawal. Once an accomplished 
fact, they always would have been a fact. There would 
have been no possibility of retraction, and the obliga- 
tions never could have been suspended. China would 
have diplomatically hung herself. She was helpless, 
and how she ever escaped doing it is indeed another 
"Oriental mystery." 

And as an answer to Japan's explanation of "Group 
V" and her action respecting it, in relinquishing her 
insistence thereanent, she formally notified China that 
she would present its demands later ! 

But we were again generous. 



220 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Any administration in this country which could 
accept Japan's explanation would be fairly entitled to 
be called the beau-ideal of ineptitude in diplomacy 
and foreign affairs, and would furnish all the explana- 
tion that is necessary of why there are sent abroad, 
especially to the Pacific, men who have no knowledge 
of the tasks which they accept, and are incapable of 
collecting the necessary information, or of forming 
correct opinions, respecting the welfare of our interests, 
national dangers, obligations, and opportunities. 

There was raised for us the whole question of our 
position on the Pacific Ocean. While China was 
"eating the bitter sausage", to use the words of her 
sages, Europe was mad, America was hypnotized by 
the fact that war was still possible in the world, and no 
less than forty-six treaties, largely of our making, were 
dissolving before Japan's continental policy of control 
of China and its development, and forcible leadership 
of East Asia. 

Japan's demands and her onslaught upon Peking 
involved the oldest foreign commercial and other na- 
tional foreign rights and interests of the United States. 
Our connection with East Asia, especially the mainland, 
is identified with our national origin and birth. We 
were involved there before the existence of any other 
international power in East Asia, save Russia. If there 
is any place abroad where we can justly and properly 
interfere in foreign affairs, it is in East Asia, where our 
ancient interests lie. 

In 1784, in the start-off, ours were sea legs, and we 
took to the water. We were shipmakers ; our first 
important export was ships, and the only international 
and foreign thing we could do was in ships. We went, 
in as straight a line as a ship could take, to China. 



CHINA'S TURN 221 

Canton was our goal ; we waited not for charts ; we 
took our school geographies from the little red school- 
house down the road and fetched up on the Pearl 
down Whampoa way, there by the pagoda, and we got 
there in 1784. 

We entered China, carrying with us the intention of 
complete submission to China's laws on the principle 
that "be they ever so unjust we will not resist them." 
In 1821, two years before the enunciation of the Monroe 
Doctrine, the last act of ours in adherence to that prin- 
ciple was performed in surrendering at Canton the sailor 
Terranova to punishment by Chinese law. In this 
sense the Open Door and equality of rights doctrine is 
older than the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemi- 
sphere. 

In 1844 we wrote extraterritoriality into the treaties 
of China ; extraterritoriality, — the right of responsibil- 
ity of foreigners only to their own laws, free right of 
trade and of travel, freedom from taxation, and in cer- 
tain cases and to large classes universal right of free 
residence and free exercise, with no native restrictions 
of volition and vocation, — the instrument that is 
the means and defense of all interference in China's 
internal affairs, the practice so much condemned by 
President W r ilson in defense of our imaginary virtues, 
and in withdrawing from support of the Six-Power Loan. 
By it seventeen nations in specific terms were let into 
China, "each one of which nations must consent to the 
abrogation or modification of the doctrine [of extraterri- 
toriality] before China can exercise the functions of 
an independent sovereign power." 

Without burdening the reader with the treaty phrase- 
ology, which he can observe at leisure, I will quote from 
T. R. Jernigan, our eminent ex-Consul General and in- 



222 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

ternational lawyer of Shanghai, who has witnessed fifty 
years of our treaty's operations in East Asia : 

"The Government of the United States was the first 
to declare itself clearly and definitely with reference to 
extraterritoriality and its application to China," says 
Jernigan. The American- Chinese Treaty of July, 
1844, set up the rights of foreign merchants and mis- 
sionaries; "the first unequivocal announcement of 
the principle was made in this treaty by the Govern- 
ment of the United States." 

Our participation and interference in the affairs of 
China, internal and external, have expanded from that 
until the present moment. In 1859, we again largely 
rewrote and expanded the treaties, being the first to 
extend the rights of missionaries in China to superiority 
over the Chinese, and causing these rights to be incor- 
porated at the same time in the French and British 
treaties and in others later. The rights of missionaries 
were the basis of the access to the interior of China, 
soon enjoyed not only by the missionaries of all powers, 
but by all travelers and merchants, all of whom enjoy 
extraterritorial immunity and protection. 

The principles of the Open Door, already bespoken 
by Commander Kearny of our East India squadron, 
also were formally set up with the writing of our first 
treaty with China. This principle and the principle 
of the right to exercise interference in China's internal 
affairs went hand in hand. We proceeded to build up 
both of these together. In 1868, we signed the Bur- 
lingame Treaty for wider intercourse with Chinese in 
this country, but in 1880, on account of the greater 
benefit to China and in great contrast to that, we re- 
vised it to our own supposed advantage and in further 
defense of extraterritorial rights exercised in China. 



CHINA'S TURN 223 

In 1899 and 1900, under the direction of John Hay, 
our Government secured the formal adhesion of the 
great powers to the written principles of the Open Door, 
namely, equal rights of all nations in China and the in- 
tegrity of China's territory and the preservation of her 
sovereignty within it. Great Britain, Germany, France, 
Italy, and Japan adhered, and the other protocol powers 
followed, making eleven more conventions added to 
the seventeen commercial treaties, in all twenty-eight, 
in support of the principles of the Open Door and in 
defense of the right of interference in China's internal 
affairs established by the American treaty of 1844. 

In 1901, with ten other powers, we signed the pro- 
tocol for the adjustment of China's obligations entailed 
in the Boxer uprising, and byits terms, solemnly binding 
ourselves to those powers and to China, we specifically 
obligated ourselves to interfere in China's internal 
affairs for forty years. That omnibus protocol treaty 
fixed the amount of the Boxer indemnity and made 
one of its securities the salt revenues, one of China's 
incomes associated in peculiar intimacy with China's 
most officially private internal affairs, about which 
President Wilson confessed himself so sensitive. The 
protocol is a sheaf of eleven treaties, which, added to 
the twenty-eight, make thirty-nine treaties in support 
of the principles of the Open Door, all in declaration 
and defense of the practice of interference in China's 
internal affairs, whenever, in the minds of the treaty 
powers, it seemed necessary to do so. 

In emulation of our action in 1844 in first formally 
enunciating and setting up the principles of the Open 
Door and the principle of extraterritoriality in China 
and of thirty-eight subsequent treaties and conven- 
tions, two Russo-Japanese alliances, two Franco-Rus- 



224 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

sian alliances, the Portsmouth Treaty, the Ching-Ko- 
mura Convention, and the Root-Takahira agreement 
again reestablished and confirmed the principles of the 
Open Door in China and the right of interference exer- 
cised under the principle of extraterritoriality, making 
in all forty-six living treaties, embodying the two 
cardinal principles governing all her foreign relations, 
and underlying the political existence of China, for 
which we are directly responsible. Therefore, we have 
certain definite, unmistakable, and unavoidable respon- 
sibilities and obligations in China. 

This was the building-up work. The breaking-down 
processes were already exercising their influence. The 
fundamental weakness of the plan of relations between 
China and the powers to which we first gave form was 
extraterritoriality. Not content with this license, 
dissatisfied powers commenced the alienation of China's 
territory and the division of her sovereignty, thus 
exercising administration and control not only over 
their own people within her boundaries but over num- 
bers of China's people and considerable areas of her 
territory. This we were the providential means of hap- 
pily checking, temporarily. 

Then followed certain breaks in the defenses of the 
principles of the Open Door doctrine. In 1904, unable 
to restrain two of the East Asian alliance powers, Russia 
and Japan, from military occupation of all of Korea, — 
suzerain to China, — and the Manchu Kingdom of 
three Chinese provinces adjoining, we made the insidi- 
ous war zone agreement, which, though restricting land 
military operations within China's borders, at the same 
time sanctioned in them a flagrant violation of China's 
integrity and neutrality. In 1909, we followed with 
acquiescence in the rights claimed by Russia and 



CHINA'S TURN 225 

Japan of sovereignty in the railway zones throughout 
Manchuria. In 1910, we finally abandoned our Korean 
treaty, which had become a mere scrap of paper. And 
now we had passed into a state of demoralization and 
neglect of foreign affairs in the Pacific worse than that 
which characterized the State Department following the 
death of John Hay. In Hay we had begun again, in one 
man, to approach the stature of a world-citizen, such as, 
in Seward, we had begun to realize. They were evi- 
dences in our evolution of the pressure of the world to 
accept its invitations to world councils and world re- 
sponsibilities. Under Taft and Knox we had gone 
farther than ever before. But now we had receded 
farther than ever before. We did nothing. The pen- 
dulum seemed at the farthest distance from its axis. 
And with President Wilson's declared reasons for scut- 
tling in China, immensely worse than none at all, we 
were ready, now that the whole question of our position 
in East Asia was raised, to be kicked out. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Getting Rid of the United States 

In the whirl of party administrations in Washington, 
merrily reversing each other before the populace and 
the world, with the President answering for everybody, 
the powers could only wonder where we stood. We 
were making intermittent stabs at foreign affairs, and 
there was no reason to expect anything for ourselves 
but to get roundly trounced in the Pacific. We were 
beyond Wilson's and the administration's depth there. 
And the situation moved far out of our reach. 

It moved so far that Japan, who was complete master 
of the immediate destinies of East Asia, and who was 
the self -constituted divinity to drive us out, got 
somewhat anxious herself. As she was about to press 
her demands upon China to a conclusion, her allies in 
Europe sustained severe reverses at Neuve Chapelle, 
Ypres, at Dukla Pass, and along the Baltic, while 
Dunkirk was being shelled from the German lines 
twenty miles away with the most powerful guns ever 
constructed. Japan could not coerce China during 
the misfortunes, exasperation, and anger of her allies, 
nor the resentment of a world of her apologists and erst- 
while friends, indignant over the Lusitania horror which 
was fresh in mind, and who had just been made ac- 
quainted with her demands. She suspended pressure, 

226 



GETTING RID OF THE UNITED STATES 227 

and held "Group V", — her new high-power diploma- 
tic gun, — over China and the powers in East Asia, 
pending the east of the die in Europe. 

Tricked out of its quarry, Japan's press complained 
of its disappointment as it did in 1905 when the United 
States was the means of a peace for Japan that deprived 
her of what she thought were her just dues, as fruits 
of her victories. And there was a sentiment that 
Japanese troops should have been allowed to make 
certain the supremacy of the Manchurian allies in 
Europe, and therefore in Asia, by participation in the 
war in Europe, in order to guarantee, by this and the 
diplomacy of the ultimate peace treaties, the outcome 
in Japan's great opportunity. But the intelligence 
that directed the arm held over China and the powers 
in East Asia had proclaimed only a truce. We won- 
dered why this was, and took occasion to inquire into 
the reasons. 

One of the factors placed foremost by the "kultur- 
ists" of Japan as a cause and justification of her rise 
and expansion is overcrowding at home, a condition 
that cannot be argued and a fact that must be dealt 
with. Greater Japan claims a moral right to more land 
as a sufficient territorial basis for the Greater Japan 
which destiny promises. In her neighborhood others, 
some of them alien rivals and possible antagonists, 
have set up rights in territories which she desires or 
where she desires rights, and are obstacles to her ambi- 
tions. This is Japan's own case. 

It has been pointed out that the "Man from Mars ", 
if asked to pass on such claims, would give large regions 
of other peoples' countries to needy Asiatic nations like 
Japan — in other words erase treaties, crush bound- 
aries. In any case Mars will erase and crush them, a 



228 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

fact that is no longer debatable in Europe, or in the 
Pacific, where the principle involved in the destruction 
of Belgium and of Serbia is firmly set up, even by 
the Manchurian allies. Both Russia and Japan jointly 
determined after their war that unless diplomacy could 
be made to weigh against boundaries, doctrines, treaties, 
and agreements supported by capital and other physical 
interests which they themselves did not possess, arms 
must, greatly flattering Russia by justifying the policy 
she had pursued in Manchuria. 

But with Japan the slogan has always been "diplo- 
macy first", and probably no political triphammer 
ever had the lightning punching power to outdo Japan's 
diplomacy, as is shown in her handling of China under 
the conditions created by the European war, especially 
by her demands upon China and by "Group V", the 
new Japanese diplomatic gun which sent its high ex- 
plosive diplomatic shells into the world's diplomatic 
Dunkirk. Japan's diplomacy moved with seeming 
instantaneousness. An anti-diplomatic government 
like ours could no more follow it than a tortoise could 
follow a hare. 

The most recent declarations of those prominent 
in the Japanese expansion movement show what Japan 
meant. 

"It is Japan's mission," says Count Okuma, Premier 
of Japan, in Japan to America, "to harmonize Eastern 
and Western civilizations. We Japanese are given 
facilities to serve as interpreters of the Orient." 

"I think it is a great mistake," says Fukui, Manag- 
ing Director, Mitsu Products Company, in the same 
message, "for any nation to try to do business in the 
Far East without taking Japan's position geographically 
and commercially into consideration. Instead of look- 



GETTINCx RID OF THE UNITED STATES 229 

ing upon her as an opponent, they should consider her 
as a business partner," etc. 

Japan's efforts and aspirations to be the intermediary 
between East Asia and the West are an attempt to fit 
herself into the world as both an Asiatic and a Western 
country. Her people have had many inventions for 
doing this, from that of proving themselves not Mon- 
golians to showing themselves the exponents of Mon- 
roeism. And the main task in this was naturally that 
of getting rid of the United States in East Asia, as we 
now had no manner of doubt, because the Open Door 
doctrine disposes of the place of mediator between 
East Asia and the West, and interpreter of East Asia, 
to all powers and peoples alike. Japan had set herself 
the task of taking toll of the West, — of being the gate- 
keeper to East Asia, of recovering those rights of the 
Open Door doctrine for herself, — a diplomatic task 
under the aegis of Mars. 

This was no small order. Since August 1, 1914, it had 
been a more important question with Japan than before 
as to what she would call her policy. It is not easy to 
displace the Open Door doctrine, which is the only 
discoverable basis of honor and right in the conditions 
which prevail in East Asia. How to displace it with 
any semblance of decency was the problem. The Open 
Door doctrine was still the mold of anti-bellum politics 
in East Asia. We had great interests in China, and 
our people were under the impression that in general 
the principles of the Open Door prevailed. So were 
most Britons. They believed those principles to be the 
general basis of all their dealings respecting China. 
Japan could not lightly discard the doctrine of the Open 
Door until something was found to put in its place. 
But it is obvious that with Russia as an ally in defense 



230 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

of special right, supported by the entire quadruple 
alliance, the only thing that could save the Open Door 
doctrine would be its usefulness to Japan. 

Opinion from Europe was evidence that the thought 
uppermost in the minds of Japan's allies was whether 
Japan was prepared and determined to supersede the 
Open Door doctrine, no more welcome because it was 
alien, with one of her own, and what its character and 
limitations would be. In this they had a guide. On 
December 26, 1899, Minister Aoki's words in accept- 
ance of John Hay's Open Door proposal showed the 
nature of Japan's adherence to that doctrine. His 
words were: "Japan would have no hesitation in giv- 
ing assent to so just and fair a proposal, providing all 
the other powers concerned accepted the same." 

This would at any time let Japan out, through the 
loophole of claims of violation of the doctrine by Russia 
and others. Likewise Russia could do the same re- 
specting Japan and others, and the whole case of the 
Open Door, by an interlocking damnation, could be 
thrown into desuetude. In fact, Japan did us the 
honor to send her political adviser, Henry W. Denison, 
to our ambassador, Mr. O'Brien, to warn us that the 
pledges given in the Open Door agreements came too 
late. 

As all this was an early premise in the question, it 
presupposed an alternative, a stop-gap. Some sub- 
stitute could find place, and Japan was prepared for 
this also. After the Treaty of Portsmouth, when Secre- 
tary Root let go the reins of power which Secretary 
Hay had held in East Asia, allowing Komura to seize 
them, and turned his attention to Latin America, 
Japan followed us. We could not be let off scot free. 
She pursued us as far as Magdalena Bay, and having 



GETTING RID OF THE UNITED STATES 231 

raised that question, now known as an aim for a Japa- 
nese naval base on the American coast, there was in- 
vented in Japan the idea of a "Monroe Doctrine" for 
East Asia. 

In view of the committal of Japan to Komura's plan 
of expansion and "Greater Japan", the idea was 
grotesque. Its merits rested solely in its appeal to the 
vanity and credulity of the great English-speaking 
people of America. To carry out Komura's plan of 
state for unrestricted and indefinite expansion upon the 
continent, Japan had to eliminate us, the Open Door 
country. It was a kind of swallowing act, ludicrous, 
and showing that the champions of national policy were 
rather hard put in order to name Komura's plan of 
state before the world. 

The attempt of turning the Open Door into a 
"Monroe Doctrine" had its awkward side. Mon- 
roeism in the Western Hemisphere is support of the 
weak in their right of unhampered self-development. 
Japan's needs — she asked everything — which are 
the soul of her policy, were the exact negative of this. 
Komura in the beginning declared before the Diet the 
policy of relieving the overcrowding at home in Japan 
by free immigration into Korea and South Manchuria 
as a part of the new plan of state. Not long after this 
began, Korea was annexed ! In five years Japan's 
immigration had expanded beyond her concessions in 
South Manchuria, and she had now forced from China 
land and industrial rights for Japanese, not only through- 
out South Manchuria, but Eastern Mongolia and part 
of Chihli. 

In Latin America there is no such thing as extraterri- 
toriality, or any division of sovereignty, or interference 
of outsiders in the foreign affairs of its countries. 



232 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Backed by military force, Japan not only exercises but 
extends in China all of these, to which she adds control 
of all commerce, industry, and development in the line 
of her expansion. Lacking everything which China 
has to give, Japan, therefore, in the disguise of the 
Monroe Doctrine for East Asia, is a veritable wolf 
in sheep's clothing. The absurdities of the adventure 
prevented any authoritative enunciation of it in Japan, 
and its most intelligent champions grasped the nettle 
at the outset by admitting that from the point of view 
of the Japanese a Monroe Doctrine in East Asia 
would mean the control of China by Japan to the exclu- 
sion of all other States. Between the "wolf in sheep's 
clothing" and the "dog in the manger" thus offered 
to her, the Monroe Doctrine of East Asia held out no 
tenable position. 

In the meantime, under headway of her advance 
upon special right as against the mutual Open Door 
interests of all parties, the end of her policy and the only 
one which by her plan of state she could pursue was that 
of a division of China with Russia, or with Russia, 
Great Britain, and France. Anything else was impos- 
sible, unless, in addition to prying the barnacles of 
foreign politics from the Chinese ship of state, Japan 
could drive France and Great Britain from the south 
and Russia from the north. This was the time to do 
it, especially if, under the provisions of her demands 
enforced against the Government at Peking and held 
over it by "Group V" for arsenals, armament, and ad- 
visers and aids, she could arm in her own behalf the 
myriad Chinese. / 

It was obvious that the councils of Japan would 
not enunciate any Monroe doctrine in East Asia as a 
substitute for the doctrine of the Open Door. It is 



GETTING RID OF THE UNITED STATES 233 

incompatible with Japan's plan of state invented by 
Komura because it does not look into the future. Fur- 
thermore, it would interfere with her policy, of which 
her sudden and almost boundless demands made upon 
China, the success and realization of which depend upon 
the duration of the European war, are an expression. 
Should the European war cease with unexpected sud- 
denness, the domination in East Asia of the military 
group of the powers, in view of Japan's course now 
exposed by China, would be dissolved, and the capital- 
istic group would be restored. 

Just when Japan would have pressed home her pro- 
gram, reverses to the Manchurian allies in both theaters 
of war caused her for the time being to suspend demands 
which she warned China of renewing. It was obvious 
that in prying loose the barnacles of the foreign powers 
from the ship of state in China, as with American help 
she scraped the ship of state clean from incumbrances 
at home, Japan had a substitute for the doctrine of the 
Open Door. Would she throw off the mask and declare 
it? 

None of the Manchurian allies since 1903, and the Rus- 
sian-Japanese War, but had been playing a hazardous 
and terribly dangerous game, as Europe shows. But 
for Japan this was the time to try it again. She must 
face some kind of reckoning. Should her allies win, 
they would be able to reimburse themselves in Europe. 
And it should not be hard to satisfy them in East Asia, 
with ourselves out of it. For with undiminished re- 
cuperative power and increased power of aggression and 
retention, they could realize in most of Japan's gains 
all the advantages of equal rights with her. To each 
of these four powers, so far as they possess the ability 
and determination to exercise force, equal right is 



234 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

assured by alliance and the automatic duplication on 
each of their frontiers of most of the advantages gained 
by Japan. Should they lose, Japan must reckon with 
them in China and with their conquerors also. 

The Briton has tolerated the course of Japan since 
the alliance with misgivings and difficulty. When, after 
the first horrible and deadening British catastrophe, 

— twelve thousand troops sacrificed at Neuve Chapelle, 

— came the reverses to the Manchurian allies at Ypres, 
in the Carpathians, and along the Baltic, the terrible 
moment was reflected in Tokio in connection with 
"Group V." Japan gave way. On May 7, China's 
Government and the officials of the foreign legations in 
Peking were surprised to find that after insisting upon 
the acceptance of her demands, Japan suspended her 
ultimatum and postponed discussion of all of the seven 
articles of "Group V" except one which had been 
previously agreed to affecting her "sphere" of Fukien 
Province. Simultaneously there was given out in Tokio 
the suggestion that "the influence of the Elder States- 
men resulted in further concessions being made to 
China in the belief that the lasting interests of the 
empire could best be served by convincing the powers 
that Japan is guided by a spirit of justice and a desire 
for the preservation of peace in the Orient." 

The rising anger of Great Britain over Japan's doings, 
complicated by the stinging pain and embarrassment at 
Ypres, was expressed in all her foremost newspapers — 
the London Times, The Daily News, The Morning Post, 
the Telegraph, The Manchester Guardian, etc. The 
Elder Statesmen had been in eclipse for a decade. They 
began to go under a cloud shortly after Komura re- 
turned from Portsmouth in 1905, because, headed by 
Prince Ito, they defended and stood by the treaties and 



GETTING RID OF THE UNITED STATES 235 

Open Door agreements respecting Korea, which Ko- 
mura's plan of state, brought from Portsmouth, had 
condemned. They all but vanished when, seeing the 
futility of opposing the Komura "kulturists", who were 
bent upon national expansion on the continent, Ito 
saved that body from complete eclipse for the time being 
by joining the "kulturists." He did all he could to 
save the Elder Statesmen by, at least for the time, doing 
the behests of their opponents, for whom he lost his life. 
Their influence then continued to wane; the erasing 
of the treaties and agreements over Korea and its 
successful annexation without protest from the powers 
deepened the shadow of their eclipse; and between 
Komura and Kato it was believed at the beginning of the 
World War that the Elder Statesmen had practically 
disappeared. They owed their resurrection to Neuve 
Chapelle, Ypres, and Dukla Pass ! — which also gave 
the treaties in East Asia a breathing spell. 

The fact that Japan entered upon the program dis- 
closed by China, when the latter made known Japan's 
double demands, was prima facie evidence that Japan 
intended to carry it through. Japan's complaint that 
China violated her agreement not to discuss the nego- 
tiations and Japanese relations with others was trifling, 
since China has never had any defense against modern 
powers, except an appeal to the tribunal of world 
opinion and to third powers, and always has been 
forced to inform others. 

Japan knew perfectly that China would be obliged 
to make known and would make known to the powers 
her demands, and that we, as the late guardians of the 
principles of the Open Door, were out of it, and would 
give Japan a free hand. Japan, therefore, could have 
intended but one thing : with American intervention 



236 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

annulled, Germany's interests eliminated, and her 
colleagues of the Manchurian alliance approaching a 
position where for their sacrifices they stood to com- 
pensate themselves in Europe, and in which even the 
need of recuperating would for a long time make them 
unexacting partners in East Asia, so long as they 
could imitate in their own spheres there what Japan 
might do in hers, Japan could realize Komura's policy 
and plans of state with a position stronger and more 
securely intrenched on the continent than ever before. 
The inevitable disclosure of her address to China would 
have meant nothing if that address had succeeded. 
By relinquishing a large part of the pressure upon China 
and upon the treaties, contained in "Group V", Japan 
escaped at least part of the world's odium. 

Japan had hesitated. She had relinquished "Group 
V" in her ultimatum, though she had warned China 
that it was only suspended. Was the victory for the 
treaties only temporary? As faded the memory of 
Neuve Chapelle, Ypres, and Dukla Pass, by which the 
Elder Statesmen alone were able to hold the "kul- 
turists ", would the courage of the Government return. 
Who was in control with the young Emperor at Tokio 
— the "kulturists" remaking the world of East Asia, 
or the Elder Statesmen honoring the treaties ? Was it 
in Okuma, or Kato, to be as bold as Komura, and throw 
off the mask ? 

Had no setback occurred to the Manchurian allies 
in Europe, perhaps nothing could have prevented Japan 
throwing off the mask at once. On the other hand, 
with "Group V" still suspended over China, and in the 
prospect of a long war, Japanese diplomacy no doubt 
saw its final victory, the rapid political elimination from 
East Asia of all Western powers not allied with her, 



GETTING RID OF THE UNITED STATES 237 

and the decline coincidentally of those that were, 
until the automatic elevation of the Japanese Asiatic 
doctrine of sole control in China and domination of the 
Pacific was an appreciable reality. Six months after 
the opening of the World War we could see this situa- 
tion behind the mask, and the prospect held over us 
of Asia and Europe upon our backs in China and East 
Asia, and Japan so situated as to call us to account in 
the Western Hemisphere. 

It is but a question of time, — short and urgent, as 
this galloping history shows, — until a comprehensive 
reckoning to readjust the relations across the Pacific 
will set in. It is only a question of a more definite de- 
termination of the fate of China, and the relative 
placidity of East Asia, until the scene of Asiatic in- 
fluence and European-Asiatic power in the Pacific will 
be shifted to the Western Hemisphere and begin to 
imitate on the eastern shores of the Pacific the interfer- 
ence which the westward trend of civilization until now 
has worked on the western. As a reckoning not unlike 
an earthquake, or a tidal wave, or both, is the only 
one anticipated, a knowledge of our footing in relation 
to Japan is the first essential to us. 

The United States hitherto has been the good genius 
of rightful intercourse and mediation between East 
Asia and the West, and between China and all countries. 
Its treaty of 1844, which was the model of subsequent 
treaties of all powers, including Japan, furnished the 
basis of practical intercourse with, and progressive 
development of China. In 1854-1857 America opened 
the door of Japan to all nations, setting the model for 
all treaties with her, and stood by her, defending her 
integrity, sovereignty, her right to develop, her dignity 
and amour propre, until she was secured in all her rights, 



238 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

some of which we assisted her to recover after she had 
surrendered or lost them. 

After twenty years of intercourse almost unclouded 
by suspicion on the part of Japan, America first crossed 
Japan's path in Korea. In 1876, by a treaty, she 
thought to open Korea. She maintained a legation 
at Seoul, but the relations were so inhospitable that 
General Saigo, Minister of War, volunteered to go to 
Korea as an envoy in order that, by losing his life there, 
he might give Japan a casus belli, furnishing her a basis 
for conquest of Korea. 

So, in 1880, when Commander Shufeldt opened Korea 
to the world, Japan resented it. She had already taken 
the Loochoo Kingdom, which General Grant, on evi- 
dence supplied by the researches of our Doctor McCar- 
tee, an eminent servant of Japan, had shown belonged 
to China, and by his advice of moderation obviated war. 
We had used our established diplomacy of consideration, 
and had first consulted with Japan respecting Korea, 
but Japan refused us assistance. It was Japan's first 
political mistake in American- Japanese relations re- 
specting the Asian continent. The two countries should 
have worked together. Wlien Shufeldt reached Che- 
mulpo to sign the treaty, he found there a Japanese 
war vessel, whose commander tendered his services, 
and would have rectified his Government's mistake, 
but it was too late — China had arranged the treaty 
for signature. 

Japan forgot this not, neither against us nor against 
China, as was shown in 1894, at our second crossing 
of Japan's pathway. Japan put the American-Korean 
treaty to a test. With China^ we had put in that 
treaty, — copied from our treaty with China, — the 
mutual obligation to use good offices to rectify diffi- 



GETTING RID OF THE UNITED STATES 239 

culties with third parties. About to become the 
victim of Chinese-Japanese rivalry, Korea appealed 
for our intervention, China followed. We declined 
both, as well as the twice presented solicitations of 
Great Britain. We avoided any embarrassment of 
Japan in her policy for preeminence in Korea as against 
China, but extended our services to all, and on Novem- 
ber 6, 1894, President Cleveland offered his services 
in behalf of peace, which were accepted, and for which 
he was thanked by the Emperor of Japan by letter on 
conclusion of a peace treaty. 

On December 26, 1899, Japan accepted America's 
proposition of the Open Door doctrine on the continent. 
She had taken Formosa from China, and had tried 
to hold a large section of Manchuria, and the phraseol- 
ogy of her reply was both an admission of her own guilt 
and an accusation against others. Our proposition was 
more than welcome to Japan because of the rapid ag- 
gressions of Russia in her direction. At this time our 
pressure in support of the Open Door constituted the 
only defense which Japan had against Russia, especially 
in 1902, when we protested against Russia's aggressions. 

The man John Hay, in life and in death, was one of 
America's greatest contributions to Greater Japan. 
His passing was a providential blessing to its promoters. 
Hay died, and American policy weakened. The dis- 
integration of the tie uniting the Open Door powers 
began. Seeing this, Great Britain turned to the power 
that was superseding us, Japan, and on January 30, 
1903, the two formed an alliance. Disintegration of 
American- Japanese mutual interests began, i.e., the 
mutual interests of the Open Door, by which Japan 
turned from the principles of the Open Door to those of 
special right. She no longer had any use for John Hay. 



240 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

For twenty-five years Japan had no ground for com- 
plaint, and, in fact, may have had additional cause to 
( regret that she had not lent her assistance to America 
in 1880. Then in 1905 we crossed Japan for the third 
time, when we were parties to a peace treaty that left 
her to find in China the expected fruits of her victories 
over Russia, by sharing there jointly with Russia 
special rights upon which Russia's conquest was based, 
and which would serve as a shield against America and 
the principles of the Open Door. 

But if we crossed her here, also we assisted her to 
gain the basis of her policy, as I have shown. Seeing 
we were no more than a qualified moral force in world 
affairs affecting East Asia, and that she had nothing to 
gain by continuing with us, Japan turned to the special 
rights powers, notably Russia, with whom she culti- 
vated an understanding. Here began the pilgrimage 
of Japanese diplomacy toward the goal of alliance of 
the Manchurian allies, which is the quadruple alliance 
of Europe and of the World War. 

In 1909 we drew the herring across Japan's trail in 
our opposition to Russian administration of Harbin, 
and in the proposal for the neutralization of the railways 
of Manchuria, which uncovered the policy of Komura 
and Japan's abandonment of the principles of the Open 
Door and her coalition with Russia in claims of special 
rights. Our proposal was obnoxious to Japan because 
she had already reached an entente with Russia, and 
in her Russian agreement, the "predatory pact" of 
July 4, 1910, the Open Door received a Japanese con- 
demnation, in its nature a death sentence. 

Japan had waged her war with Russia on the claim 
of defending the principles of the Open Door on the 
continent, both in Korea and China, against the claims 



GETTING RID OF THE UNITED STATES 241 

of special right and the aggressions promoted on the 
basis of those claims. Since that moment, 1905, when 
Komura returned to Japan and suffered the resentment 
that was visited upon us jointly, it has been Japan's 
unwearying problem how and when to get rid of us in 
East Asia, and of our ubiquitous and inflexible doctrines 
involved in the Open Door — the sanctity of China's 
frontiers, the inviolability of her sovereignty, and the 
equality of right and freedom of all nations in trade, 
commerce, and development. And Komura straight- 
way inaugurated the elimination process with the 
words which he put into the mouths of the Chinese, 
opposing the introduction of American capital into 
the railway in South Manchuria. But especially has 
this been Japan's determination since our efforts, 1909, 
to annul "Article VI" of the Russian agreement with 
China of 1896 by mutual consent of the powers and for 
mutual benefit, in order to remove the cause of viola- 
tion of China's sovereignty by Russia and Japan in 
coalition. 

With the conclusion of the Treaty of Portsmouth by 
which, with our cooperation, Japan lost the immediate 
fruits of victory which she expected from Russia, special 
right which she usurped, not Open Door, in China, was 
Japan's aim. Russia had the former, we the latter, 
and that is why Japan, on July 4, 1910, threw us over 
for Russia. Japan afterward tried to justify her re- 
jection of the proposal for neutralization of the Man- 
churian railways so as to try and make it harmonize 
with the principles of the Open Door. But it did not 
interfere with her program. In 1910, she annexed 
Korea, though in the face of all denials of intention to 
do so made for the Emperor by Prince Ito. 



CHAPTER XV 

Defeat in the Pacific 

Although by the time the World War opened we 
were hardly remembered at Peking, except in feelings 
which we did not care to arouse, our situation respect- 
ing the reckoning promised in the future theater of 
the world's great events could not stay the unbridled 
iconoclasm of the people of California and the Govern- 
ment of the District of Columbia. 

We were not prepared for sacrifices where we had 
spent so much and gained so little. Since 1856 our 
only assets in China and Japan had been Asiatic good 
will. Our cultural interests, missions and schools, and 
everything else, were a great liability. Our trade with 
Japan, never more than a small fraction of the aggre- 
gate prophesied for us when Japan was opened to 
trade sixty years before, represented a golden gift to 
her of an annual balance of twenty-five millions of 
dollars and over. And it had ever since been seen 
that the only hope of commercial equality and mutual 
gain, to say nothing of recouping ourselves, lay in the 
development of trade with China. Yet it was not 
until 1902 that our exports to China for the first time 
exceeded imports — and alas, it was a combined 
famine gift ! and an ephemeral war trade ! 

It appeared that American trade, or the increase in 

242 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 243 

commercial intercourse across the Pacific, declined as 
trade and trade facilities increased, especially trade 
intercourse with China. During the whole decade, 
since 1900, of our struggle for the principles of the 
Open Door, American trade with China persisted in 
its downward course. This may be seen by setting 
aside traffic due to Russian development in Manchuria, 
the Russian-Japanese War, and Japanese expansion in 
China. The whole prosperity of American trade during 
that decade was directly due to war, rather than to 
the Open Door doctrine. Of the American trade of 
fifty-eight million six hundred thousand dollars in 1905, 
about thirty-one and one half millions was a war trade 
paid for by European and American money. This 
trade disappeared in two years without being replaced 
in the development that followed the war, although 
the commercial treaties of all nations had been revised 
in the interests of trade, and in 1906 sixteen additional 
trade marts were opened in Manchuria. Notwith- 
standing large quantities of American flour contributed 
for famine relief and sent to the Yangtse this year and 
the next, that was not trade, but swelled the trade 
reports of those years, the decline continued. 

The facts presented by the statistics of the years 1901- 
1910 were sufficient to cause the Government to investi- 
gate the whole Open Door policy. Results warranted 
but one conclusion : Trade was coming under control 
of organized foreign finance and large industrial de- 
velopment, and European money and trade specializa- 
tion were being extensively applied in the development 
of China, to turn the trade to Europe and to Japan. 

In the light of these facts, the conditions of American 
trade in the Pacific at the end of the Open Door 
decade, 1900-1910, suggested a commercial, political, 



244 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

and diplomatic defeat. The maximum annual trade 
with China for the decade was seen to be only about 
twenty-seven million dollars when shorn of its war 
quota, only about our annual cash gift to Japan. This 
of course reduced the decline per cent., covering the 
succeeding half of the decade, but it emphasized the 
fundamental character of the decline, and moreover, 
it showed that America was the only country that 
did not prepare for the post-bellum prosperity fore- 
seen by other nations, especially Japan, and loudly 
prophesied by Count Okuma. Japan and Germany 
reaped the profit of this prosperity. Britain held her 
own, and America, while satisfied with what Europe 
would throw to her after it had taken the lion's share, 
was sailing only with the wind, content to see the in- 
crease of trade in the Pacific go to Japan and to 
increase her gold bonus to Japanese commerce. 

The story of the decline of American exports to 
China from the year 1905 is graphically pictured in 
the sinking figures : first, roughly, fifty-eight millions 
to thirty millions, to twenty-three, then to twenty-one, 
to nineteen, and then to fifteen millions — little more 
than a fourth of the maximum. 

Our consular officers gave the story of the com- 
mercial fray in their dispatches of 1910. That year 
American oil was reported as making a good stand in 
the zone of Hongkong and southward. For six months 
American kerosene captured Sumatra oil markets in 
Southern Manchuria. But it was making a hard fight, 
showing an advance in quantity over 1909 of twenty- 
nine per cent., but a decline in price of twelve per cent. 
It was fighting a rate war with the oil of Russia, the 
Dutch Indies, and Japan. But in the best light of 
interpretation, the Government's reports from China 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 245 

were bitter reading for the captains of American in- 
dustry and the friends of trade expansion in the Pacific. 
In two years American cottons at Shanghai decreased 
over sixty per cent., while British increased fifty per 
cent., and Japanese from thirty per cent, in some 
lines, to fifty-seven and one half times original sales. 

The American flour trade was captured by com- 
petitors in all the regions between Shanghai and 
Hongkong. American cotton goods, previously found 
everywhere in Manchuria, had been replaced by 
Japanese and Indian. In one year flour imports had 
fallen from $305,127 to $73, — the trade taken by 
Japanese, Russian, and Chinese flour. 

The reasons given for the decline of our trade with 
China were that in all the important lines, such as 
cottons, flour, and steel, the sales and distributions 
were in the hands of foreigners and were left to shift 
for themselves, and also that American trade received 
no assistance from the American Government. The 
consuls constantly emphasized the decline in American 
goods handled by "middlemen." While our trade was 
left to shift for itself, the economic and political meas- 
ures of other nations for trade extension struck heavy 
blows against our own. Our competitors first sub- 
sidized their ships, even Russia, and then secured 
large loans to China, by which great volumes of trade 
were controlled. But this movement, led by Great 
Britain and France and imitated by Germany, found 
its most remarkable exponent in Japan. 

One of the recurring statements in the American 
reports from East Asia on the decline in our trade 
read thus: "At the same time Japanese goods show 
large increases, British stationary, etc." Japan's com- 
merce, especially since the Russian-Japanese War, was 



246 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

elaborately supported by subsidies, loans, and encour- 
agement from the Government. Japan's development 
exceeded the expectations of the Japanese Govern- 
ment, notably of the "war cabinet" which had in it 
such men as Marquis Ito, Count Inouye, Count 
Katsura, and others. The opponents of this cabinet 
professed to believe in a great industrial and commer- 
cial expansion. The results astonished the prophets. 
Our traders noted that Japan, with Manchurian 
coal, successfully competed in the coal trade with the 
Chinese mines, and that Japanese flour mills in Man- 
churia, financed by Japanese government money loaned 
at four per cent., met all competition. The losses to 
our flour trade were not made up by the additional 
trade in American milling machinery, extensively used 
in Manchuria. By the development of the Hokkaido 
and the Yalu Eiver timber zones, Japan also diminished 
our timber export from the Pacific coast. Japanese 
built certain kinds of rolling stock for the South Man- 
churian Railway, of better finish and material, at less 
cost than did American builders. 

Japan had nationalized all important industries by 
lending them state funds. She had extended ship 
subsidies and the state monopolies of salt, camphor, 
tobacco, and the railways. The boasted "command 
of the Pacific" by us Japan had determined to dispute, 
and, as Baron Kaneko said, "also do her best to con- 
trol the Far Eastern markets." 

When we decided to enter the competition for trade 
in China and the preservation of the Open Door, 
Japan was prepared to meet the measures taken by 
other powers by measures of her own. On October 14, 
1908, the Emperor of Japan began stimulation of 
Japanese commerce and trade in an edict based on 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 247 

the wish "to share fully in the benefits of the general 
amelioration and improvement" in the world. He 
pointed out that the development of the national re- 
sources was necessary in order to keep pace with the 
constant progress of the world, and to participate in 
the blessings of civilization. 

Thus the Japanese Throne met the most vital of 
Japan's problems, affecting her aspirations to a pre- 
dominating influence in the Pacific. Its edict was 
characterized by Japanese critics as unsurpassed for 
simplicity, dignity, and weighty import by any docu- 
ment of similar historic importance. It seemed to 
make a profound impression upon the Japanese. It 
embraced, as a matter of fact, the whole national 
aspiration for expansion and prosperity. 

Henry B. Miller, our Consul General at Yokohama, 
in dissecting Japan's commercial anatomy under the 
system of nationalization of commercial finances, rail- 
ways, and steamships, said that the whole population 
of fifty million people of Japan could be concentrated 
by the Government behind any one industry or ac- 
tivity. Japan, therefore, had the most formidable 
tools for commercial conquest. She was further 
fortified by European alliances, protective of special 
rights, and these she was working to extend. 

The circumstances warranted the fear by an awak- 
ened American commerce of Japanese destructive com- 
petition. The whole theory and belief of our Govern- 
ment, regarding the development of East Asia, had 
been that its benefits would descend upon all nations, 
and that their interests would supplement each other. 
This was the basis of the Open Door policy, and was 
the belief upon which the acceptance of that principle 
by the powers was supposed to have been based. And 



248 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

so far, it was not Japanese competition that routed 
American trade in China ; it was European monopoly. 
The cost of production in Japan had been steadily 
increasing. Coal, labor, commodities, and taxation 
had advanced. The taste for luxuries was growing. 
Japan's economic level had reached to about that of 
Southern Europe, and was rising gradually to meet 
that of Great Britain and America. The trade of 
Japan with the countries of the Pacific would soon be 
governed by the same stable laws of commercial 
equality that prevailed in the Atlantic. 

But this could not be, under conditions of inequality 
such as the monopolizing of trade, and the benefits of 
industrial developments through foreign loans to China 
introduced by Europe, which Japan was certain to 
meet, if not by capital, which she lacked, then by 
diplomacy and arms. By the time we had signed 
with China the Currency Loan, Japan showed that, 
just as she had marshaled the powers in diplomacy 
and formed the Manchurian alliance, she could dictate 
the distribution of trade, to such a degree at least as 
to shut out any nations that were not prepared to 
meet the conditions of competition in China, both 
economic and political. 

Our commerce with China, little more than double 
what it had been three quarters of a century before, 
was relatively wiped out. By the time we achieved 
our first loan successes, to safeguard our commerce, 
the other capitalistic powers and Japan had almost 
eliminated us from trade, as well as politics. The 
process of getting rid of us had undermined our posi- 
tion as the champions of the Open Door, and Japan, 
who coveted our mantle, was not kept waiting and 
did not often have to take the initiative. She had the 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 249 

assistance of all our other rivals, and of the ignorance, 
indifference, and often perfidy, of ourselves. From 
the time American finance in China and Japan, in 
the plans of Schiff and Harriman, collapsed in 1905, 
and at the signing of the Currency Loan, 1910, Amer- 
ican exports to China had fallen from fifty-eight million 
six hundred thousand dollars to fifteen million five 
hundred fifty thousand dollars. This represented, 
in a powerful way, the depredations of foreign diplo- 
macy and policy upon American interests in East 
Asia. Cold commercial history showed that American 
trade had been routed in China, the greatest potential 
market in the world, and that America's vaunted ex- 
pansion in the Pacific, which, with possession of the 
Philippines and the building of the Panama Canal, it 
was prophesied would become, with its circle of "nine 
hundred million" people, "an American lake", did 
not exist. 

In 1913, when President Wilson took the stand 
that we were not prepared to accept the conditions of 
competition, Japan, as she had fallen heir to Russia's 
position on the continent, became our legatee with 
respect to the Open Door policy, and the leader 
of the powers in the Pacific, and we began "to play 
an effaced role in the Pacific, unworthy of our great 
country." Our merchant marine long ago had been 
swept away, and out of an unrecorded number of 
American vessels in the trade of East Asia in the past, 
of which ninety-six arrived at Shanghai alone in one 
year, only six successors on regular service survived 
the Open Door decade. It was perfectly understood 
that if American enterprise was defeated across the 
Pacific, it would be the second oversea failure since 
the loss of the whaling and sealing industry, and after 



250 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

our Government's awakening, if American intervention 
through finance and industry in China were defeated, 
it would be the third, and then the nation might begin 
to understand what the limitation of its destiny and 
the influence of its institutions was to be, not only in 
the Pacific and East Asia, but what it was to mean to 
the world. 

And it was defeated ! 

Not only were our trading-barge merchant fleets of 
the Pacific, our whaling and sealing fleets, and clipper- 
carrier fleets gone, long ago, but financial and industrial 
measures first to improve, then to retain, and last to 
reclaim, were now lost. Yet that was not all. While 
waned our chances of trade recovery, we lost the trade 
and commerce. 

The progress of the World War promised to reveal 
with humiliating conviction, to the most secluded and 
indifferent, by spectacles of incalculable military 
brutalities, the limitations of our national influence 
and destiny. International law was wrecked, our 
treaties defied, our vessels sunk, and our citizens 
murdered. But as if this prospect of destruction of 
all chance of meeting either a sudden or late reckoning 
in the Pacific were not enough, the Government pro- 
ceeded to sacrifice the ships that kept alive that 
trade and commerce and international intercourse. It 
neither paused nor looked about in its debacle. The 
sailing barges with which we had conquered the com- 
merce of the Pacific and the world had been succeeded 
by steamships, and the struggle of the steamships 
began with the passing of the sail. That also is a tale 
of Japan which events now for the first time permit 
to be told. 

The steamships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Com- 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 251 

pany were the first on the American-Asian trail. 
Born in 1847, "to build a great mail steamship route 
between New York and Hongkong, via the Isthmus of 
Panama and San Francisco, with branch line between 
China and Japan, and a coast line from Panama to 
Oregon", came the Pacific Mail. 

Organized in 1848 : All that is California, Arizona, 
Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and more, had become 
ours, and we had to get to it, and to Oregon Territory, 
which we had before. Three steamers were launched 
and, headed by the California, worked their way to 
the Pacific in time to find at Panama throngs of gold 
seekers, who had mule-backed across the Isthmus, 
bound for San Francisco Bay, and took them — 
many, as it were, hanging to the rigging. 

William H. Aspinwall was the genius of this. Profits 
estimated at four hundred thousand dollars, with the 
gold rush, "ran into millions of gross receipts per 
annum." And so the story went. Outgrown ships 
were sold and replaced ; in 1860 the company was re- 
organized; in 1865, it enlarged its capital stock from 
four to ten millions, and then was so inspired by the 
vast prospects in the Pacific as to increase its stock to 
twenty millions. 

Lo, we came by Alaska, and had more Pacific Ocean 
coast line than any people whatsoever. As showing 
what we declined from, there came to the Pacific Mail 
Steamship Company our Government's contract and 
five hundred thousand dollars annual subsidy for a 
mail service between San Francisco and Hongkong, 
via Hawaii. As interpreted, the thoughts of the pro- 
moters were fixed on "a large field for their own enter- 
prise." The vast empire of East Asia and the Islands 
of Japan, about five thousand miles from their Pacific 



252 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

terminus, — the already known resources of which 
represented, together, the industry of nearly five hun- 
dred million people, — all "pointed to this grand field 
as the proper and legitimate one in which to throw 
their surplus energies." 

So with surplus energies and surplus moneys they 
built ships costing about one million dollars each, of 
wood, with side wheels and walking beam engines. 
One was called The Golden Age, in token of the Cali- 
fornia era. It was the golden age of lithography, and 
their owners ordered, large as wont, prints then beau- 
tiful and now old and unsurpassed, showing these 
merchant leviathans in the Golden Gate named by 
Fremont, under Fuji, sung by ten thousand Japanese 
poets, and beneath Hongkong's Peak, hailed by all 
the sailors of the world. In 1867, when the company's 
property was valued at thirty million dollars, it went 
overseas to Asia. It had the fine Colorado, Great 
Republic, Celestial Empire, America, and Japan — 
3628 to 4100 tons register. While on the coast in 
East Asia it had the Costa Rica, 1917 tons, with others 
to follow. 

The names of the organizers had disappeared from 
the management of the company, and it was a new 
and grander enterprise. Its agents in the new trans- 
Pacific world were : Oliver Eldridge at San Francisco, 
James H. Phinney at Yokohama, Russell and Company 
at Shanghai, and S. Ledyard Phelps at Hongkong. 
It entered a region of wonder and romance, and many 
are the names and doings connected with it that, in 
the iconoclasm of the hour, give us pause. 

Following the example of Captain Robert Gray, who 
left the Revolutionary Navy to take the Columbia and 
discover the Columbia River, Captain Alfred G. Gray, 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 253 

of the Navy, entered this first steamship service in the 
Pacific. The America was the first to cross — autumn 
of 1867. It carried general cargo and merchant, 
missionary, and official passengers, inaugurating the 
romance of "Pacific Mail" trade and travel. Now 
that nothing remains of its hopes in trans-Pacific 
annals but the name, the incidents of its existence 
have become important in Pacific history. Rises up 
the name of the dramatic, picturesque, and immortal 
Anson Burlingame, leaving China on the world mission 
for Emperor Tao Kuang. Ex-Secretary of State 
Seward moves in the opposite direction to Japan, 
China, and beyond, on his tour of the world. Again 
from the west comes the famous Iwakura Mission, 
then General Saigo Yorimichi, commissioner to the 
Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, where the first 
display of Japanese art made the lasting impression 
felt in this country. Comes the first Chinese Embassy 
to the United States, and then General Grant, home- 
bound from his tour of the world. 

The opening of relations with China, Japan, Siam, 
and Korea, with the names of notables connected with 
those events and others in world history, are associated 
with the name of the Pacific Mail. They include the 
greater number of the American missionaries, educa- 
tors, and advisers, who contributed to bringing Eastern 
countries into the modern world. Many of the Japa- 
nese, Chinese, and Siamese students, who created 
modern Siam and Japan and New China, found their 
way to America by these ships. 

The Alaska and the China were added to the fleet, 
whose steamers, after leaving San Francisco, proceeded 
directly from Yokohama to Hongkong, via Van Die- 
men's Straits, returning by the same route. The 



254 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

South American service was extended down the west 
coast. The New. York, Golden Age, Oregon, Ariel, and 
Nevada became a part of the service on the coast of 
Asia. Connecting at Yokohama with the trans-Pacific 
steamers, when the latter were not too long overdue, 
they took mails, passengers, and cargo to way-ports, 
returning with passengers, mails, silk, tea, etc., to 
Yokohama. 

This was the building up. The erosion of the fleet 
was heralded by the loss in the beginning off Katsuma, 
Awa, with sixty lives, of one of the first ships, under 
Captain Newell. Then all went well until 1872, when 
the Ariel was lost near Kiukazan, Sendai. Also the 
Japanese began to awaken to the importance of mer- 
chant marine. The Iwasaki family, with the Mitsu- 
Bishi Company, having taken over the native craft 
and several small steamers from the Daimyo of Tosa, 
started a line in opposition to the Japanese Govern- 
ment's Osaka- Yokohama line, employing foreign cap- 
tains and engineers of a better class than those em- 
ployed by the Government. By 1873 they had taken 
over the government line, and reached the problem 
of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's coast line. 
Coincidentally another steamer of this line, commanded 
by Captain Corning, was lost on the Japan coast. 
Then began the history in the company's affairs that 
is characteristic of all our overseas enterprises in the 
Pacific. 

Okuma, later Premier of Japan, was the financial 
factor of the Iwasakis. In 1875, he challenged the 
Pacific Mail Steamship Company to sell its Rve 
steamers on the East Asian coast, including the cargo 
hulks, Rose at Kobe and Shamrock at Nagasaki, the 
mooring buoy at Kobe, and the godowns, office, and 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 255 

pontoon at Shanghai, offering seven hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars. Through its agent at Yokohama, 
Henry Hart, the offer was refused, whereupon the 
Iwasakis at once bought three ships from the English 
Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company, and 
started a vigorous opposition, running down freight 
and passenger rates until the Pacific Mail receipts had 
fallen off sixty thousand dollars per month. In 1877, 
when the Satsuma Rebellion broke out, an opportu- 
nity came for both sides to reconsider the proposal, 
and the Pacific Mail Company parted with the identical 
five steamers to the Mitsu-Bishi Company. From 
that time, especially with the great increase of trade 
with America, Japan kept her eyes upon the Pacific 
Mail Steamship line. But she never expected it to 
fall into her hands without so much as the asking. 

The struggle of American steamships had been taken 
up in other regions of the Pacific. The extension of 
the Pacific Mail Steamship service to Asia was followed 
by an American steamship service across the South 
Pacific. 

In 1870 the first San Francisco-Sydney service was 
run, beginning nearly forty years of struggle for an 
American-Australian Steamship line. H. H. Hall, 
the American consul at Sydney, undertook a tempo- 
rary monthly service for the New South Wales and 
New Zealand governments. The American Steam 
Navigation Company furnished the two steamers, 
Rangatira, and Balclutha, soon replaced by the City 
of Melbourne and Wong a Wong a. 

In 1871, Hall's line was superseded by a fleet of 
four paddle steamers put on by the firm of Webb and 
Holladay. The Nevada, Nebraska, Dacotah, and Moses 
Taylor, 1354 tons to 2145 tons net, were the vessels 



256 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

employed. On April 8, 1871, the Nebraska opened 
the service by sailing from San Francisco. The 
Nevada followed, then the Dacotah, which reached 
Australia in 1873. 

There were no faster steam vessels in the Pacific. 
The Nebraska was rated the best of the fleet, and 
had a steaming record of twenty-six days and nine- 
teen hours from San Francisco to Sydney. But the 
curse of the latter-day Pacific hung over them. The 
Nebraska and the Nevada affected a kind of military 
air. "Leaving port, they fired guns, and when they 
signaled for the pilot, were it early dawn or after dark, 
they demanded quick dispatch." "They allowed no 
one to forget that they were the Mail." It was said 
that once, when the captain of the Nevada was making 
up time, he overhauled the bark A. H. Badger. As he 
passed her, his port paddle-box struck the sailing 
ship with sufficient force to damage the paddle-box 
and break some of the paddle floats. "Arriving at 
Sydney, the captain * guessed he grazed something' 
on the way across." When the captain of the bark, 
with his wife and child and the ship's company, reached 
Sydney, it was learned that the accident to the bark 
had caused it to founder the following day in a gale, 
and the Australians expressed their indignation at 
every visit of the Nevada thereafter. Some of the pas- 
sengers sent a protest to Washington when the Ship 
Subsidy Bill was before Congress, causing the with- 
drawal of the company's subsidy. In disfavor through- 
out the Pacific, the line ceased operation in April, 1873, 
with the sailing of the Nebraska from Sydney. 

Mr. Hall, our enterprising consul, was not dismayed. 
In partnership with P. S. Forbes, he then undertook a 
service with an Australian and New Zealand joint 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 257 

subsidy, employing the steamers Mongol and Tartar, 
two thousand tons register, chartered from the New 
York, London, and China Steamship Company, the 
steamer McGregor, which reached New Zealand, Sep- 
tember, 1874, and the Grenada, which made the con- 
nection for these steamers between Honolulu and San 
Francisco, though occasionally visiting Australasia. 
At the end of the year the Cyphrenes and the Mikado 
replaced the first two, and later the American Steam 
Navigation Company's City of Melbourne, with new 
compound engines, made a few trips between San 
Francisco and Sydney, in one of which she steamed 
the distance in twenty-six days. But after incurring 
a penalty of ten thousand pounds for a breach of 
contract in failure to maintain schedule, the line 
terminated. 

Australia and New Zealand then accepted an offer 
by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, as against 
the offer of the North German Lloyd Company, to 
run twenty-five hundred ton steamers on the San 
Francisco line. In conjunction with the Fairfield 
Shipbuilding Company of Glasgow, the steamers 
Zealandia and Australia, built by the latter, and the 
Vasco da Gama, Colima, City of San Francisco, City of 
New York, and City of Sydney entered into the service, 
which was inaugurated November 10, 1875, by the 
dispatch of the Colima from San Francisco. This was 
one of the fastest ships owned by the Pacific Mail 
Company, but with the Vasco da Gama was withdrawn 
soon after, troubled with broken crank-shafts, cracked 
piston-heads, and other engine misfortunes. 

In 1885, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's last 
contract expired for the Australasian service, and it 
withdrew to its original trans-Pacific undertaking. 



258 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

The Oceanic Steamship Company of America, incor- 
porated 1881, the outgrowth of a line of small schooners 
and brigs operated by the J. D. Spreckles and Brothers 
Company between Hawaii and San Francisco, with the 
Union Steamship Company of New Zealand, succeeded 
in the Australian service. The latter put on the 
Alameda and Mariposa, 3158 tons gross measure- 
ment, and the Mariposa left San Francisco on Novem- 
ber 21, 1885. 

J. D. Spreckles was virtually the Oceanic Company. 
Though entitled by contract to run but two of the 
three vessels on the American-Australian line, after 
one or two runs by the Union Company's vessel, whose 
accommodations were not equal to the service required, 
he provided all three, resuming the two-vessel service 
in 1890. 

On November 21, 1900, the Oceanic Steamship Com- 
pany inaugurated a new service with the sailing of the 
Sierra from San Francisco to Sydney, followed by the 
Sonoma and Ventura, newly built at Cramp's ship- 
building yards, Philadelphia. Under a contract with 
our Government for the carriage of mails, it com- 
menced a three-weekly service between San Francisco, 
Hawaii, Pago Pago, Tutuila, and Sydney. The Ala- 
meda was placed on the local run between San Francisco 
and Honolulu, and the Mariposa was converted into 
an oil burner, and was placed on the run between 
San Francisco and Tahiti, under a contract with the 
two governments concerned. 

In January, 1903, the two million five hundred 
thousand dollar capital stock of the Oceanic Steam- 
ship Company was doubled in anticipation of new 
opportunities. But in 1906, owing to the earthquake 
and fire which partly destroyed San Francisco, and 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 259 

the consequent disruption of business, the Sierra, 
Sonoma, and Ventura were laid up. Meantime the 
Alameda was continued in the San Francisco-Honolulu 
service until the Sierra had been converted into an 
oil burner, when she was sold, and the Sierra took up 
the local run to Honolulu. 

British competition caused the withdrawal of the 
Tahiti, and the Mariposa was sold. And the end 
seemed appreciably near, when all vessels were con- 
verted into more economic "oil burners", and in 
1912, under a new government contract, a twenty- 
eight-day service between San Francisco and Sydney, 
via Hawaii and Tutuila, was established. In 1915, 
the World War had stayed the Pacific curse in respect 
to this line, and with increased traffic with British 
colonies, the Sierra was restored to the Australian 
run, with the Sonoma and Ventura, with the common 
fate awaiting it at the war's end. 

In 1898, the Government established its transport 
service between San Francisco and Manila. In 1902, 
the Northern Pacific Railway and the Boston Steam- 
ship Company made steamship connection from Oregon 
and Washington with Japan and China. In 1905, 
two ships, the Minnesota and Dakota, twenty-eight 
thousand tons each, and the largest in the Pacific, 
were launched by the Great Northern Railway Com- 
pany. And this year an Alaska-Siberia service was 
established, and Robert Dollar was building up a 
trans-Pacific freight service of four ships. 

American ships, up to the beginning of the Shanghai 
period, averaged about three hundred tons register 
each. One hundred of them, such as visited East 
Asia at that period, therefore aggregated in tonnage 
only thirty thousand. At the same time, at the be- 



260 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

ginning of 1905, the total tonnage of American steam- 
ships in regular trans-Pacific commerce, was only 
23,426. In that year, however, when the Great 
Northern Railway Company launched two vessels to 
connect Oregon and Washington with East Asia, the 
Pacific Mail Steamship Company added three vessels 
of nearly twenty-four thousand tons each, and the 
tonnage of American trans-Pacific ships rose to 149,685 ! 

It was a "lightning before death." 

Our ships were not only the means that had created 
and safeguarded our foreign commerce and trade, as 
history showed, but they contributed to the defense 
of the nation. Their sinews not only were the bul- 
wark of foreign trade but were a part of our naval 
force and of land military force when employed abroad. 
In the Pacific they had given us all of the material 
assets we could claim in a long contest for reciprocal 
advantages in East Asia. And we needed them now 
more than ever before, because our contest was to be 
with Asiatic competition. 

The Chinese and Japanese, — the two great nations 
of one civilization, to whom our steamships came as a 
friendly overture, — expressed its significance to them 
in striking contrast. When the Pacific Mail ships 
reached Hongkong, the Kwangtung Chinese there 
discovered that the wooden hulls were sheathed with 
copper. In 1868, while one of the steamers lay at 
her dock, the sampan men stripped the copper off one 
entire side, "and not a soul on board heard even a 
suspicious noise." 

Not so to the Japanese. The most interesting and 
valuable picture of a Pacific Mail steamship is Japa- 
nese. Not so much because of its art, as because of 
its moral significance and associations. A large draw- 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 261 

ing, made on wooden boards by an unknown Japanese 
artist, it was hung by a priest in a temple beside the 
Inland Sea, and for forty years remained there, a sacred 
object to worshipers who followed the sea, and until 
the owners of the temple were persuaded to part with 
it, and it was carried to San Francisco. 

The subsequent history of these two peoples respect- 
ing steamships was reflected in these incidents. China 
never moved successfully. Although in China there 
is one so-called Chinese steamer service, it has never 
been efficient or profitable. On the other hand, in 
Japan, the arrival of our steamships, made an event 
of religious significance in a temple beside the Inland 
Sea, was followed by the move of the Iwasaki family. 
And from it developed the policy that put Japan in 
the position to displace all our trans-Pacific steamship 
service, and to veritably "capture the trade of the 
Pacific." 

"Winding up business in this part of the world," 
as was said of our defeat in the steamship service, 
traces its initiative from the beginning of the steam 
era. Of the first trans-Pacific steamers, the America 
was burnt in Yokohama Harbor, the Japan burnt 
off the coast of China between Amoy and Hongkong, 
while the Great Republic was lost on the Columbia 
River Bar. The others were broken up. 

A new type, the screw-driven steamers, which we 
had learned to build, took their places. But the coast 
service in Asia was not resumed. Although the Pacific 
Mail became a great international steamship line, 
identified with the meeting of the two great civiliza- 
tions across the world's greatest ocean, its dreams of 
expansion in the Pacific had not materialized. It was 
a great factor when it entered the trade and travel 



262 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

that populated California, and to an extent, Oregon 
and Hawaii, and again when it crossed the Pacific. 
It was the first steamer line across the Pacific. Yoko- 
hama owes its early prosperity and its place as a great 
port to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. But 
glory could not save it. It lost money sometimes, 
and suspended dividends, sometimes made a few 
hundreds of dollars, and even at times a few tens of 
thousands. But it never realized what the original 
promoters of the service to California realized, and 
in 1893 it was practically defunct. 

Former American success on the deep seas was won 
in an age of chance, by daring and self-denial, when 
there were still unknown and unfrequented seas, un- 
discovered wealth, and secret marts of barter and 
shipping. But these were no more. The present was 
an age of science in trade, as well as in other things. 
There was no undiscovered country, in a physical 
sense, and chance had been essentially outlawed. 
Therefore science must be employed. 

Then Collis P. Huntington employed Lieutenant 
R. P. Schwerin to again build up the Pacific Mail. 
And, still without subsidies such as were enjoyed by 
all its competitors, it was resuscitated and reorganized 
into a worthy competitor of foreign shipping, equipped 
with the largest vessels on the Pacific, excepting two 
which belonged to the Great Northern Railway. 

In 1901 came American opportunity to imitate 
American shipping achievements in the Pacific in the 
past. Commerce improved on account of the occupa- 
tion of China by foreign troops, and the opportunities 
of trade expansion which followed. The Hill and 
Harriman railroads warred for ports on the Pacific in 
Washington and Oregon from whence to re-tap Asia, 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 263 

and several movements were started. One of these 
was the movement for revival of our merchant marine 
by subsidies and reformed shipping laws, permitting 
foreign-built ships to sail under the American flag; 
another, the special study of world economy by consuls 
and special officers ; another, reform and extension 
abroad of communications — banking, telegraphs, and 
mails; another, the modification of the tariff — the 
Chinese Great Wall, shutting out trade expansion; 
and still another, the formidable increase of our navy 
and army — all for the extension to foreign regions, 
notably Pacific regions, of our commerce, and a proper 
influence and respect for our rights and institutions. 

When the Northern Pacific Steamship Company 
started a trans-Pacific trade from Seattle, Harriman 
added to the Pacific Mail fleet the three new vessels, 
of nearly twenty-four thousand tons each, already 
mentioned. But nothing further was achieved, and 
we were again reminded that we could not do with 
steam at sea what we had done with sail ; that no 
American trans-Pacific trade ever equaled in relative 
importance the "clipper trade", mainly via the Cape 
of Good Hope, 1843-1857 ; that the attempt to revive 
it across the Pacific, which had exercised a fascinating 
influence over American imagination, is the toughest 
problem of American commerce; and that men of 
the present, including the law makers, show themselves 
unequal to conditions. It has remained the great 
industrial question of the United States — the problem, 
the goal, and the quondam prize of railway builders, 
manufacturers, financiers, and merchants. 

As long as the problem of scientific pursuit of foreign 
trade, and special study of national foreign interests, 
was not mastered, all attempts were vain. Our mer- 



264 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

chant marine and carrying trade continued to decline 
toward the vanishing point. James J. Hill confessed 
failure. One of his fine vessels, the Dakota, became "a 
wreck on a Japanese reef." Failure in the Pacific, 
which once gave such great wealth to our traders, was 
the testimony of all, from Aspinwall to Huntington 
and the Goulds, and finally to R. S. Lovett, who suc- 
ceeded Huntington and Harriman in the Southern 
Pacific Railway. 

These confessions of failure in the Pacific had one 
notable exception. The discouraging career of the 
Pacific Mail Line and the Northern Pacific Steamship 
Line did not deter, but on the contrary, inspired 
Edward H. Harriman. Where others merely sought 
to tap the Asiatic seaboard from our Pacific coast, he 
conceived the idea of himself building the Panama 
Canal, as a patriotic duty, so as to turn Atlantic ships 
across the Pacific. When that became a government 
enterprise, he worked out and, as I have shown, partly 
executed a plan for a steamer and train circuit of the 
globe, traversing entirely the north temperate zone. 

Not even the New England navigators and traders 
surpassed Harriman in sheer daring. He wished to 
join the Pacific with the Atlantic by an Asian rail 
route with ship connections with New England, a 
project as romantic to the imagination as Jonathan 
Carver's Pacific waterway through the North American 
continent, and yet capable of realization. 

When he had done this, and after Japan had can- 
celed her undertakings in the matter, Japan came 
forward with an offer to buy the Pacific Mail Steamship 
Company. 

As the principal owner of the Southern Pacific Rail- 
road Company, Harriman had the disposal of the 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 265 

ships in his hands. He declined the Japanese offer. 
He said he owed a duty to his stockholders, because he 
could dispose of the ships at a profit. But his patriotic 
duty obliged him to retain the flag upon the Pacific. 

The plans of Harriman were an attempt to realize 
the national dream of a hundred and twenty years. 
Had he lived, there is no doubt the story of our mer- 
chant marine would have been different. While he 
was still developing his plan, the conditions of com- 
petition became more exacting. Our lines received 
no subsidies of any kind and had to compete with 
foreign lines, principally Japanese, subsidized in the 
Pacific to the extent of two million four hundred and 
one thousand dollars per annum. 

In 1912, the Pacific Mail made an effort to revive 
from the blow it had received in the death of Harri- 
man, putting on an intermediate service with ships 
chartered in the Atlantic. Then came the loss of one 
of these, the Asia, in the track of the old side-wheeler, 
Japan. It ran ashore and was looted clean by Fukien 
pirates. And finally, in 1914, Congress passed, and 
President Wilson signed, the "Seamen's Act" requiring 
"seventy -five per cent, of the crews on American ships 
in all departments to understand any order given by 
their officers in the native language of the officers", 
which made it impossible any longer to employ Asiatic 
crews on American ships in the Pacific, and thereby 
unprofitable to run the ships competing especially 
with the Japanese. Although the Pacific Mail shipped 
instructors after the passage of the Act, the Asiatic 
crews could not learn English. 

The Government, which had never reimbursed 
Harriman for patriotically saving Imperial Valley 
from inundation by the Colorado River in 1906, at 



266 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

a cost of three million dollars, now at a blow destroyed 
the great steamship service which he had patriotically 
retained on the Pacific. 

The Pacific Mail could do nothing but dissolve, and 
after hawking its ships in Wall Street for several weeks, 
sold out at a heavy discount. In August, 1915, eight 
of the vessels, including the Manchuria, Mongolia, 
Korea, Siberia, and China, went to the International 
Mercantile Marine at New York and the Toyo Kisen 
Kaisha of Japan. On September 29, Honolulu fes- 
tooned the Manchuria with a wreath inscribed "Aloha 
Pacific Mail ", and the Pacific bade the Pacific Mail 
adieu. 

On October 6, the last steamer of the first trans- 
Pacific steamer service was in home dock in San 
Francisco Bay with good-bys like burial wreaths. 
October 10 saw all trans-Pacific offices of the company 
closed. With their names and the flag in giant World 
War design, half a ship's length, painted on the ships' 
sides, they left for the Atlantic. On October 15, at a 
meeting of the stockholders, the capital stock was 
dissipated, and in trans-Pacific shipping the company 
became a name only. The Northern Pacific withdrew 
its vessel, the Minnesota, and the Robert Dollar Com- 
pany sought the transference of its vessels to Van- 
couver to supplement the service of the British and 
the depleted Canadian trans-Pacific fleet. 

The Oceanic Steamship Company, with three minor 
vessels, and having no Asiatic competition, was the 
only American deep-sea line in the Pacific. The total 
of American steam tonnage in all services there was 
reduced to 20,838, less than that of the American- 
Asian service alone in 1905. 

Our exit from Asia was described thus by the Japa- 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 267 

nese East and West Neivs : "The Pacific Mail flag 
which floated over Number 4 Water Street, Yokohama, 
for many years, was recently displaced by the house 
flag of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha, which company has 
now taken possession of the premises. Those present 
at the ceremony, says the [Kobe] Chronicle, were Mr. 
Campbell, local agent of the Pacific Mail Company, 
and his staff, a representative of the T. K. K. and 
Mr. G. H. Scidmore, United States Consul-General. 
The Japan Gazette says that Mr. Campbell, in handing 
over the lease of the property and hauling down the 
flag, wished the T. K. K. every success in its new home. 
Mr. Campbell has offices on the premises which he 
will occupy until the business of the Pacific Mail Co. 
is wound up — the last rites of American shipping on 
the Pacific Ocean !" 

American whalers, traders, and steam mariners in 
turn peacefully captured the Pacific as it never had 
been captured, but none were able to stay. The 
whalers were conquered by destruction in the Civil 
War, through government neglect and failure in its 
responsibilities, and changes in the industry. The 
early traders of our own and all other countries were 
conquered by our clippers. Our clippers there were 
conquered by our steamers, and in steam traffic we 
have been weaker than in anything that preceded it. 

What Harriman refused to do alone, others did 
jointly. On March 18, 1913, when President Wilson 
withdrew government support from the financing of 
trade in China, we were back to 1844, to the Canton 
Period, in East Asia. On November 4, 1915, when 
the "Seamen's Act" went into effect, we were again 
back to 1784, with all our future merchant marine 
and trade to make. With the signature of the Presi- 



268 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

dent, American competition in the Pacific trade was 
removed, and we "lowered our flag to Japan." Before 
the rise of the Japanese mercantile marine, our trans- 
Pacific shipping disappeared. Japan, which had fifteen 
ships in Pacific trade in 1914, in 1915 had forty-five, 
and was rapidly building. Creasy's prophecy was 
again disproved. Our national dream was realized 
by an Asiatic power. "Intentionally or not," said 
Asano, President of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha, "the 
Pacific trade is the gift of the United States to Japan 
through the passage of your new Seamen's Bill." 

Attracted by war traffic and war freight rates 
created since the Seaman's Act came into force, the 
Pacific Mail, under new owners, in June, 1916, bought 
the Dutch ship Ecuador, converted it into an oil 
burner in emulation of the measures of economy 
originated in the Pacific by the Oceanic Steamship 
Company, to meet Asiatic competition, and with two 
other former Dutch ships, crept back, temporarily, 
to the Pacific and began sailings in August. As they 
did so, they announced that "during the existence of 
the present abnormal freight rates these ships could 
be profitably operated", after which the future of 
"the only trans-Pacific line operating under the 
American flag" would "depend upon the action of 
the Federal authorities. It became impossible," it 
said, "for American capital to operate ships on the 
Pacific Ocean under the American flag in normal 
times. If the Seaman's Bill is left unmodified, and 
the Alexander Shipping Bill [for a government-owned 
merchant marine] should become a law without ma- 
terial modification, then this condition of affairs will 
again prevail in normal times." 

In the six months preceding this action, Japan's 



DEFEAT IN THE PACIFIC 269 

ocean trade with South America, where the service 
of the Pacific Mail had been maintained longest, with 
additional Japanese ships sent to that region, increased 
in the ratio of one hundred and forty per cent., while 
the exports for the empire under conditions of the 
Japanese shipping conquest in the Pacific had in- 
creased fifty-six per cent., and steel for other ships 
was leaving our ports for Japanese shipyards. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Recession 

Still, even defeat in diplomacy and trade by Japan 
and the "special rights" allies was not enough. There 
must be a complete renunciation in East Asia and the 
Western Pacific, and so the Government attempted to 
compel a scuttling of the Philippines by a measure in 
Congress to bring the flag back nearly five thousand 
miles in 1920 to Hawaii, leaving us with the isolated 
coaling station of Guam in the Western Pacific. There 
was no justification in statesmanship, reason, or 
humanity for this, except that by our good intentions 
and ineptitude we had become offensive to Japan 
and were intimidated by her. 

Japan had attacked our right of tenure there and 
threatened our neighbors in that region. And in 
May, 1912, after China had asked us for the Currency 
Loan, and the interests of all the powers in it were 
arranged, certain Japanese opinion in elucidation of 
Japan's policy was expressed by the Osaka Asahi 
Shimbun, as follows : 

"The United States, having no territorial concessions 
and no geographical facilities, has assumed the political 
and financial guidance of China. She has offered to 
furnish the capital for the exploitation of Liaotung — 
in return for rights. She has organised a loan syndicate 
of English, German, French, and American bankers, 

270 



RECESSION 271 

and assumed $50,000,000 of the total amount. By 
bold and skilful diplomacy she has out-maneuvered 
Japan, Russia, and England, whose rights and interests 
are predominant, and forced them to take a back seat. 
In the Revolution, when the Japanese and English 
diplomatists were so circumspect as to incur the an- 
noyance of the Chinese, the United States, by clever 
diplomacy, kept on the best of terms with the North 
and the South. When the Emperor abdicated, the 
United States was sympathetic. Then when the 
Republic was declared, it was America who came for- 
ward with the proposal that the Powers should help 
the new Republic to the restoration of order in China. 
America, to our astonishment, has succeeded in con- 
vincing China that it is she who is laboring to help her 
in her distress. 

"The United States has vastly improved her position 
in China, and under the Republic will succeed even 
more, and it is probable that she will become China's 
guide. The new Cabinet is pro-American. Yuan 
[Shih-k'ai] once tried to form an American Alliance, 
and it was to Tong [Shao-yi] he intrusted the work. 
The Ministers of State are equally pro- American. 
Hsiung Hsi-ling, the Minister of Finance, encouraged 
American financiers to provide the funds for the de- 
velopment of Manchuria, so as to checkmate the 
aggression of Russia and Japan. He will turn to 
America again now. The new officials are mostly of 
American education. The forceful American represent- 
ative, Mr. Calhoun, is strongly backed by the American 
pressmen in Peking. The American missionary is ever 
conveniently near, urging the Chinese on. The word 
"Republic" is a charm at the present moment, and 
its constant use makes the Chinese believe that the 



272 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Americans are their only true friends. They forget 
how their countrymen are despised, insulted, humili- 
ated, and persecuted in America. They humbly 
follow their guides. Japan is only separated from 
China by a narrow strip of water. Our interests are 
predominant there. Why don't the Japanese people 
do something to arouse the officials from their slumber 
to a realisation of the position?" 

Japan had served notice on us in East Asia, in 
several unmistakable forms, to get out. That was the 
message of her July 4, 1910, "predatory pact" with 
Russia. It was the message of her handling of the 
Conspiracy Case in Korea, when the courts were 
dominated by the anti-missionary "Kulturists" of 
Japan. It was the message of the second defeat of 
the Six-Power Loan through the same Independence 
Day pact, in which Japan had the support of both 
Russia and Russia's ally, France. But it was still 
more the pungent and ruthless message of Japan's 
demands upon China : while in 1915, the highest 
ranking and most important Japanese official in the 
United States, but one, said plainly to us these words : 
"We two nations can have peace if you will stay out 
of East Asia." 

Europe in East Asia had always regarded us as 
"impossible, but unavoidable." Japan determined us 
to be not only impossible but avoidable. She wasted 
no words in summoning us to get out of East Asia. 
And we have let no grass grow under our feet in doing 
so. The public, secret, and unseemly haste of Japan, 
shown especially since August 1, 1914, when the 
World War set in, has received more of its impetus 
from the conduct of our case than from any other 
source. 



RECESSION 273 

If Japan did nothing more she laid down the lines 
and conditions on which peace cannot exist in the 
Pacific. The United States is arming, forced to do so 
by the condition of the world, and one cannot but ask 
whether the flight of its diplomacy from the bugbear 
of Pacific complications is not temporary only, destined 
to be followed in time by a forcible defense of America's 
humane and just contentions, and of Western civiliza- 
tion, until the differences between East and West in 
the Pacific area can have time to work themselves 
out, at least with mutual sacrifices and mutual ad- 
vantages, and with justice to international rights. 

It will be seen from what I have said of Japanese 
accusations and criticisms, in one instance made by 
the Asahi Shimbun, when China had arranged with us 
for the Currency Loan, and it had been modified by 
the Manchurian allies out of all recognition so as to 
suit their policies, that those accusations and criticisms 
came after our virtual defeat at the hands of Japan 
and Europe. And little remained of our position ex- 
cept the few concessions and the policy and promise 
for the future which received the damnation adminis- 
tered by President Wilson. Japan's assertion of 
paramount interests in China, of herself, and then 
Russia and England, followed our diplomatic defeat. 
At that time, the insults which, through Japan's great 
diplomatic success, our envoy at Peking had to endure, 
were so humiliating that he had to be persuaded from 
resigning his post. 

But these criticisms and accusations from Japan do 
not deceive us into thinking that they originated solely 
from a natural attempt on our part, by just and legit- 
imate means, to obtain what Japan and Europe were 
obtaining by the same means and otherwise. Our 



274 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

enterprises of all kinds in the Western Pacific area 
have been unwelcome to the Japanese. Such is the 
outcome of our mission of one hundred and thirty 
years to that region. And it strikes at the institu- 
tions of America, at the spirit of the people, and at 
Western civilization. It is the conflict of the two 
civilizations. 

The preceding chapters furnish a sufficient explana- 
tion of our position in East Asia. That position is 
based solely upon the doctrine of the Open Door. 
Except in so far as the law of extraterritoriality has 
fitted itself into international relations in China, our 
principles are the same in China as those that govern 
our relations with other nations. Except by Japan, 
this has never been challenged as being less than a 
faultless basis for our own or the presence of any 
nation in East Asia. But as she has successfully 
assailed us and nearly succeeded in driving us from 
East Asia, there remains the implication that there 
may have been some just reason for doing this. There- 
fore a more complete explanation of our presence in 
the Pacific and East Asia, especially with reference to 
Japan, may be made. And this is very simple. For 
what remains, after consideration of the contribution 
from Western civilization in its trend westward across 
the Pacific, to China and Japan, which we have made, 
and the particulars which I have given to show 
how we have crossed Japan's path in the past, is 
the single question that was principally the cause 
of Japan's raising the bogey of Magdalena Bay, 
namely, the acquisition of territory and military bases 
in East Asia. 

When this came up, our contribution to the pros- 
perity of East Asia and to international commerce, 



RECESSION 275 

in the Spice Islands, by the discovery and marketing 
of pepper, the development of the fur trade across the 
Pacific, the creation of Pacific whaling, and the clipper 
ship achievement which brought East Asia two weeks 
to a month nearer Europe, were forgotten. Japan 
had fallen heir to the great whaling industry in the 
North Pacific which we had built up, and to the carry- 
ing trade, which was already within her grasp. The 
annual American subsidy to her trade, of a quarter 
of a million dollars of Pacific Coast gold, seemed to her 
a right, when she raised the question of our presence 
in a physical sense in China, and in the Philippines. 

Our first land concession in China for a trading 
settlement at Shanghai long ago passed into the 
"international settlement", and while Europe and 
Japan were building up territorial possessions in China, 
was taken out of our control. One of our commis- 
sioners to China had proposed that we join England 
and France in temporary occupation of Formosa and 
other places in order to coerce China into settling the 
vexed question of the fulfillment of our treaties, but 
it had never been more than a proposal. Commodore 
Perry had our flag raised over a group of the Bonin 
Islands where Nathaniel Savory, an American, and a 
party of mixed nationals from Hawaii had settled, 
as a possible Pacific station for our ships, to protect 
the trade by which we then dominated the Pacific. 
But although these islands did not belong to Japan, 
Perry was the first, for Japan, to claim the right of 
possession that lay in discovery, and thus he fore- 
stalled the claims set up by the British. He put on 
record the visit of a Japanese junk to that group in 
the seventeenth century. 

In 1898, we came into possession of the Philippines, 



276 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

but they were not an Asiatic possession and had not 
been acquired by conflict with any Asiatic power. 
They came to us from Europe. In 1901, we gave up 
our concession at Tientsin, and we had no base or 
foothold of any kind, in territory, anywhere in Japan 
or on the continent of Asia, or anywhere in East Asia 
except in our own European-acquired possessions. 

It was two years after that Roosevelt's "Pacific 
Era " speech at San Francisco, promising for the United 
States "the dominion of the Pacific", excited the 
resentment of Japanese who later, when Japan emerged 
from the war with Russia, declared in the words of 
Baron Kaneko that Japan would not only resist that 
dominion but take every means to control the Pacific 
trade. Roosevelt said: "America's geographical posi- 
tion on the Pacific is such as to ensure peaceful domina- 
tion of its waters in the future, if we only grasp with 
sufficient resolution the advantages of that position." 
The "advantages of that position" were those belong- 
ing to us on the eastern shore of the Pacific and in its 
waters, and those conferred upon us and all other 
nations alike on the western shores by the Open Door 
doctrine. 

The "domination of the Pacific" can be understood 
from what we did, 1851-1856, when we were in pos- 
session of its shipping, and used our control of the sea 
to peacefully open Japan and carry the light of knowl- 
edge to the famishing cubs of the Mikado, all of which 
has been abundantly testified to by Japan, in the past, 
and by other rulers, in Hawaii, China, Siam, Burma, 
and other places in the Pacific, and by what we have 
so far done for the Philippines. 

Then Japan felt the whole world altered by her 
victory over Russia in East Asia, and no longer toler- 



RECESSION 277 

ated the powers, or the conditions, around her. And 
there occurred something which set the ill feeling of 
the Japanese in this direction aflame. A report from 
our Navy recommended the acquisition of a coaling 
station on the Chinese coast, below Shanghai, preferably 
at Fuchou. It was in the same general latitude as the 
Bonin Islands, and was in the region of other naval 
stations on China's coast, notably of Japan, England, 
and France. Although it was never more than a 
proposal, unsupported by the Government, and was 
something in which it would be necessary to interest 
the people, and must be approved by the legislative 
branch of the Government, before it could be carried 
out, it created a real or feigned distrust at Tokio, 
which no assurances of our Government have succeeded 
in removing. On the contrary, it has been kept alive, 
and the Japanese Government has made the most of 
it in its campaign to oust us from East Asia. 

Yet in this matter, Japan again revealed the selfish 
basis of her action. The State Department, for our 
Government, denied any purpose to seek such a con- 
cession from China. But Japan would not believe it. 
We then proposed, as a guarantee of good faith, to 
sign with her an agreement in which both would 
undertake not to seek such a concession from China. 
Japan refused. 

Our interpretation of a naval depot in East Asia, 
such as was contemplated in the Bonin Islands plan, 
was furnished by Townsend Harris in respect to our 
treaty of 1857 with Japan, when he said of the treaty : 
"By this I have secured the choice of three good har- 
bors for our naval depot in the East, in a country 
. . . where the men cannot desert, and with a power 
sufficiently civilized to respect our rights, and above 



278 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

all not a power with whom we might have a rupture, 
like England." We never had had the least difficulty 
with Japan over our naval station in her waters. For 
nearly fifty years we had been no menace to her. But 
of course, times were changed. 

Our next naval base in the Pacific was Pearl Harbor, 
the next Pago Pago, and then Manila Bay, while in 
order to provide for our naval patrol maintained in 
concert with all nations in the riverine and coast waters 
of China, it was proper, as it had been in Japan, and 
as was the custom and necessity of other powers in 
China, to have a naval station convenient to the 
southern coast, especially in the area of piracy and 
revolutionary uprisings. The prejudice and injustice 
of Japan's imputations are perfectly conclusive from 
what she did, and did not do, when the matter came 
up for determination, as I have shown. 

On the other hand, Japan's position in the theater 
of the Western Pacific, where we had already built 
up a relatively important history, requires considera- 
tion in a similar manner. As much foolishness has 
been shouted into the public ear by our own wor- 
shipers at the Sun-god's shrine, that subject needs a 
rigorous cleansing process before it can receive a 
health certificate. But I will advance only a few 
facts from the Japanese themselves. 

Inazo Nitobe, perhaps to Americans the best known 
of Japanese writers, shortens Japan's history from 
twenty-seven to twenty centuries, clips off four or 
five centuries more, and promises alterations from 
future investigators. He makes Japan young, in 
comparison with all of her neighbors, and places her, 
in relation to Korea, China, and India, as Germany to 
Egypt. 



RECESSION 279 

Japan's two- thousand-year-old dynasty "by the 
grace of Heaven" vanishes into a mere worshipful 
belief. We find it has been a pernicious mistake to 
have translated this fable, as history, into the languages 
of Western nations, such as must deal in a practical 
manner with the Asiatic problem in the Pacific. The 
so-called Japanese divine imperial vehicle which is 
credited with transmitting the "line" is a kind of 
creche wherein many of the "emperors" were no more 
related than the eggs of a modern incubator, and did 
not even survive the brooder, much less transmit the 
line. The entire line, in English, is what we call an 
"Oriental" fraud. Nitobe says that "one babe was 
crowned at the age of two, only to abdicate at the age 
of four." Boys of five and ten occupied the "throne." 
Adults were sent to monasteries and the "imperial" 
power was traded around. The "emperor" was 
"shelved" and royal power reduced "to the shadow 
of a name." This was from the time the inhabitants 
of the island of Nippon gave up nomad life and built 
a capital. Royal power had no existence, — except in 
successive dynasties of unrelated kings, — until after 
Perry opened Japan. 

In fact Japan's line of rulers passed from one family 
to another, unrelated, hostile, like the Fujiwaras and 
the Tairas. In the twelfth century, Yoritomo cap- 
tured the government and ruled Japan from Kama- 
kura. In the seventeenth century, the Tokugawas 
stepped in. Nitobe compares these rulers to the 
robber barons of the Rhine, or the manorial lords of 
England. And they became the feudal lords or 
daimyos who ruled Japan, and with whom we made 
the opening treaties. 

The making of Japan's rulers continuous is realized 



280 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

by the same process by which the Western 'parvenu 
traces his ancestry to Charlemagne, or Alexander. 
Japan had no sciences of her own. She had no science 
of history until within the period of our present-day 
school children. As Nitobe indicates, Japanese his- 
tory remains to be identified, created, established. 
The royal power before 1868 was a house of cards, 
blown down to-day by school children. 

Japan's place in universal history is simple and brief. 
It is true that after the third century, by the grace 
of the Chinese, the inhabitants of the Japanese isles 
were able to keep written records, and in the eighth 
century some of them had a capital. Under the in- 
fluence of refugees and immigrants from China, they 
ventured upon the sea, and toward the end of the 
Middle Ages some moved about East Asia, trading as 
far as India. They left no place among nations for 
themselves, and in 1637, Iyeyasu, the first Tokugawa 
ruler, in a mandate that was not canceled until after 
Commodore Perry opened Japan, expelled foreigners 
(Portuguese and Spaniards), abolished the Christianity 
they had introduced, forbade Japanese to go or come 
at sea, forbade the building of deep-sea ships, gave the 
deathblow to all aspiration for foreign connections, 
responsibilities, opportunities, and obligations, alike. 
In consequence Japan, from being little and unaspiring, 
and relatively unimportant, never had any foreign 
relations, not even with China or Korea, and her ad- 1 , 
ministration did not function except in a small area 
around the Inland Sea. Japan did not repudiate 
responsibility or concern in foreign affairs; she never 
had any. 

Japan's emperors therefore properly begin in 1868, 
when they began to rule, with Mutsuhito who, on April 



RECESSION 281 

6, gave Japan her "Magna Charta" and started her 
off as an adult nation, like China, or the United States, 
or any other country of the world with which she had 
now to deal. It was because of the necessity of deal- 
ing with the world that Japan set up a line of emperors 
of which Yoshohito is the second of what in English 
is the ruling blood line. 

Yet the scores of little chiefs that were ruling Japan 
were not vanquished, and in 1877 made a stand against 
the Emperor comparable only to the stand which 
feudalism undertook in Germany, by the World War. 
Japan had only concluded her first self -initiated foreign 
treaty, that with Korea, and had only taken means 
to safeguard sway in Yesso and other outlying islands, 
and it was more than one hundred years after the 
United States had established itself in East Asia when 
Japan actually entered into its international affairs, 
with no acquired rights and no foreign position of her 
own whatever. Her present position has resulted, 
since 1876, entirely through "the privilege of youth" 
which "lies in the inheritance of the dearly-bought 
experience of age", which Nitobe says explains the 
statement, often repeated, "that Japan has achieved 
in five decades what it took Europe five centuries to 
accomplish." 

As Japan owed her past to China, she now owed her 
present political status, learning, and international 
position generally, to the West. For it was the order, 
civilization, and international law of the West that 
gave her all she claims in the affairs of East Asia 
to-day. The relations of the United States with 
China and their foundations in East Asia were long 
fixed in authentic, impartial, recorded history when 
this was brought about. And in what Japan claimed 



282 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

as her position in the affairs of East Asia by which, 
with the assistance of President Wilson, she kicked 
us out of the affairs of China, we antedated her by 
many decades. 

The only uncommercial outlay, the only outlay that 
may be classed as financially unproductive, which 
Japan has made for the dominion she now enjoyed, 
has been that of arms. And her arrival at the pre- 
posterous position in East Asia, toward the United 
States, which existed, was a situation that is not 
explained upon any other hypothesis than that of 
predetermined aggression for purposes of building up 
an empire out of the frontiers and resources of other 
nations. And Count Hayashi has confirmed this as 
truth. This evidently was her true historical heritage. 
Her other history might be set aside. Her reality, as 
in the case of ourselves, lies in what she does. 

I have enumerated many of the advantages which 
the United States has conferred upon Japan, but 
this has been better expressed by the Japanese, many of 
whose countrymen are lashing themselves to remember 
what those advantages were. At the time coincident 
with the events which I am describing, Nitobe was 
the envoy here of Japan, to felicitate us upon the 
happy traditions of our relations, and I remain partial 
to his words. He said: "When other nations tried 
to bar our progress or slur our reputation, America 
always stood for us and with us," although his words : 
"her Stars heralded to the world the rising of our 
Sun", intentionally the opposite, are rather suggestive 
of that inferiority in her vicinity which Japan's poli- 
ticians and expansionists have accorded us. Whatever 
we have done for her is a part of the Open Door doc- 
trine of what we would do for others. And nothing of 



RECESSION 283 

this but has been held by Japan in these days as menac- 
ing to her. Although there is to-day nothing that can 
serve the aims of making China competent, strong, and 
self-protective, which Japan professes to desire, so 
well as American capital and American cultural enter- 
prises, freely employed there, these are the things that 
have aroused nearly all Japan's enmity toward us. 
And this is easy to understand in the light of her 
continuous policy since 1903-1905. No break has 
occurred, no opportunity has been lost by Japan, in 
her aggression for ousting other powers from Korea 
and China, and possessing the cardinal material re- 
sources of both countries, including all possible meas- 
ures for subjugation of China's people, to take from 
them their heritage in order to pay for her own arma- 
ment acquired for the purposes of aggression and ex- 
pansion, and create a Japanese credit that would make 
Japanese Asiatic military hegemony financially inde- 
pendent of the world. 

In her demands made upon China, Japan was again 
clearly exposed, caught with the proofs upon her. 
With respect to the professions she has made respect- 
ing the Open Door doctrine, she was seen in perhaps 
the most compromising situation in which she had yet 
been found. Her application, penetration, acuteness 
in dissolving ties which cemented foreign interests and 
rights was Teutonic. She was like no country so 
much as Germany, regarding every affair of her neigh- 
bors as her own, and looking upon all that did not 
directly contribute to her domination as a menace to 
be driven out. 

In view of the progressive facts of Japan's course 
during a decade, nothing more is needed to show that 
it was Japan who first broke and destroyed finally 



284 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

the original concert of the Open Door for the main- 
tenance of China's territorial and administrative in- 
tegrity and sovereignty which America had laboriously 
built up. And she set adrift again, in the international 
ocean, the vastest body of the human race and the 
greatest social organism ever known, whose welfare and 
whose destiny is closely associated with that of all na- 
tions in the Pacific area. And she set it adrift for her 
own purposes, regardless of the welfare of other nations. 

When Japan had put the final touch to this act, as 
she did in the program disclosed in her demands upon 
China, and the evil that accompanied the exposure of 
her act was having its effect upon American opinion, 
she sent to us the venerable Baron Shibusawa, who 
said that he had decided to come again to America, 
before it was too late, and testify to the friendship of 
Japan and the desire of Japan for peace. In his 
youth, in the days of the restoration, he said, he had 
been a conservative. But he became convinced of 
the advantages of Western civilization, and he was 
glad Japan was awakened from her sleep of ages by 
America rather than by the hungry, ambitious nations 
in other quarters. This thought could not but inspire 
here the wish that Japan, in the awakening of yet 
other nations, could have imitated us rather than the 
hungry, ambitious nations of Europe in their years 
of license in East Asia, or even have imitated them in 
the Open Door period in their endeavor to give the 
application of its principles an opportunity to demon- 
strate the wisdom in which those principles had been 
conceived and justify the international welcome which 
they had received. 

In 1903, when Roosevelt made his "Pacific Era" 
speech, the nature of Japan's rise was not appreciated. 



RECESSION 285 

We believed Japan had adopted Western culture and 
the Open Door doctrine, and it was everywhere under- 
stood in America that Japan and China subscribed to 
the principle and spirit in the Pacific which we pro- 
moted, which was a benevolent and cultural one, not 
a military one, and was calculated to secure the Asiatic 
hegemony of East Asia and a development of modern 
civilization around the Pacific that would homogene- 
ously and benevolently rule the destinies of the greatest 
body of mankind, and exert upon the world the love 
of order, civilization, learning, respect, and peace 
exemplified in the traditions of China. 

But Japan had broken the faith. Shibusawa was 
an old man, and an honest envoy. He could not con- 
jure away the name of Komura, nor make us forget 
Ito. But his visit only emphasized the fact that the 
golden bowl was broken. It but served to brighten the 
memory of our achievements in the Pacific. We had 
conquered that region in various ways, before Japan 
knew anything about it, or had time to feel or feign 
alarm or distrust. The sound of our guns at Quallah 
Battoo, in suppression of piracy, or even at the Barrier 
Forts did not reach her ears. She was asleep — she had 
forsworn the world. Her people did not fully wake 
up until the Russian-Japanese War, and then they 
overlooked all previous history concerning our presence 
in the Pacific except what related to Commodore 
Perry. They read us out of East Asia and the Pacific. 
They adopted all the war cries of aggressive nations, 
and demanded a "place in the sun", as though they 
had been deprived of something they had ever before 
enjoyed and which we were trying to take from them, 
to do which we had stolen upon the scene unsuspected, 
and traduced a new found friend. 



286 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Neither our people in the Pacific area, nor our 
country in comparison to Japan, can be considered 
in any sense upstarts. Nations who profess to owe to 
America much of what they boast of modern civiliza- 
tion, and their international situation and relations, 
can hardly call us newcomers in the affairs of East 
Asia and the Pacific. 

To recapitulate : The foundations of American trade, 
political, social, and all other relations, and of American 
obligations, and natural and acquired rights and re- 
sponsibilities in all of East Asia, except in Japan, were 
consummated nearly one hundred years before Japan 
claimed any rights or admitted any responsibilities in 
a large part of her present domain and beyond her 
own shore limits; nearly eighty years before she de- 
cided to adopt any of the forms of the modern outside 
world, nearly seventy-five years before she consented 
to have any intercourse with nations. Japan appears to 
be unable to see beyond her own hunger and ambition. 

The place intended for us in the scheme of things to 
which Japan's demands on China belong, and which is 
a part of them, after the horror of them in America 
was manifest, was then defined by Shibusawa. It had 
often been defined by others, but Shibusawa's words 
gave the impossible an emphasis which could no longer 
be mistaken. 

Japan's first object of annulling the principles of the 
Open Door accomplished, she invited America to bring 
in her capital behind Japanese enterprises for develop- 
ing China, back it up with government support, and 
thus give national sanction to Japan in her national 
policy. Even as China herself, she had to have capital 
to develop China, and to realize the ultimate aims I 
have already outlined. 



RECESSION 287 

An examination of the utterances of responsible 
Japanese apologists for Japan, and critics of the United 
States in her relations with Japan in the Pacific, shows 
that the prevailing Japanese opinion is that we must 
accept : first, their view of East Asian affairs if we 
are to understand each other; and second, that they 
are doing in China what is for the best interests of 
China and of foreign powers. A number of the best- 
known Japanese names in this country, — and some 
of the ablest in this work are assigned to us, — occur 
to me in connection with these opinions, but I pick 
out as national spokesman Baron Yei-ichi Shibusawa, 
aged seventy-six, as a nearly lifelong friend of America, 
and the most recent and most eminent envoy to this 
country since the visits of Marquis Ito and Admiral 
Togo. 

Baron Shibusawa, reiterating the specious petitions 
made by Count Okuma and scores of his imitators in 
the past to Western capitalistic nations to recognize 
the intermediary services of non-capitalistic Japan in 
exploiting China, and take from her a political and 
military guarantee for the welfare of their investments 
in exchange for the banking and mercantile commis- 
sions which she would exact, said, in the course of his 
numerous addresses in 1915, between San Francisco 
and New York, as follows : 

"There is a big field for cooperation between the 
United States and Japan. You have the capital, 
science, and experience. We are near China, under- 
stand the Chinese, and are racially closely allied to 
them. So there is no reason why these two nations, 
by cooperation, should not succeed in taking the 
largest share in the peaceful exploitation of China. 
Here is an example of what I mean from my experience 



288 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

as a mill owner : When you set up mills in China you 
find that you cannot get foremen there. To bring 
them from America would be costly. It would be 
most economical to employ Japanese." 

Yes. French mills in America, but German fore- 
men; German mills, but Japanese foremen; English 
mills but — foremen from some poor, but armed 
political and diplomatic power waging a "political 
and commercial penetration and expansion" into the 
United States ! 

Nitobe, in describing the code of the medieval 
warriors of Japan, excuses himself for causing his 
Western hearers to linger longer than they might over 
the subject, on the ground that "without understand- 
ing them, their ideas in regard to life, to duty, to right 
and to wrong", modern Japan would "remain unin- 
telligible." "If you can grasp their viewpoint, many 
things which seem queer and paradoxical in Japanese 
life will become clearer." 

If it were not true that some of the worst of skilled 
labor in China is Japanese, and some of the best in 
the world is Chinese, it would take much more than a 
grasp of the Japanese military viewpoint to make the 
seemingly paradoxical in Japanese life out to be more 
clear than it is in these words of Baron Shibusawa. 
There is no doubt whatever of what he means, what 
those for whom he speaks mean, what Japan means, 
the entire military fraternity of Japan to their para- 
doxes notwithstanding. He voices the Japanese over- 
lordship of China and the Chinese people. But he 
overlooks the most vital bearing of this proposition, to 
us. The people of the United States believe in the 
Chinese just as they believed in the Japanese, and 
their desire is to eschew all comparisons, all partialities, 



RECESSION 289 

all that is "queer and paradoxical", and "when other 
nations try to bar their progress or slur their reputa- 
tion, to stand for them", just as in the case of Japan. 
This is something impossible to Shibusawa's and to 
Japan's viewpoint. There is a terrific moral conflict 
in the two viewpoints and the solution will never take 
place if it depends upon accepting that of Japan, al- 
though a solution is possible if Japan will adjust her 
view to include a consideration of China's rights and 
the rights of other nations in East Asia. The attitude 
that a continuance of good understanding is dependent 
upon a recognition of Japan in our enterprises in China 
constitutes a monstrous insult to America. 

The obvious reply to Shibusawa is this : Why did 
not Japan establish her good faith as a foundation 
for proposals of our cooperation with her in China by 
cooperating with us on the basis of the Ito-Harriman 
agreement? in the neutralization proposal, and the 
Kinchou-Aigun Railway? We can only believe that 
Baron Shibusawa is just another honest gentleman 
traduced by his Government, like Ito. Or was he 
merely a diplomat, "sent abroad to lie for his coun- 
try ? " If so, he made a sad mess of it, for he told the 
truth ! He exhibited how the Japanese are not a 
creative but an imitative people, not a pioneer but a 
parasitic race, battening itself upon other peoples. 
He tells us that what we two peoples may have in 
common in China lies in the employment and profit 
which we can bring to her or to ourselves, regardless 
of China. 

Do Japanese see that Japan's conquest and ambitions 
can be attained only by battening upon other nations, 
and for this is the Japanese propagandist organization 
kept at its maximum, and honest old men found to 



290 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

make friendly pilgrimages to distant countries in the 
effort to make others think as Japan does? The 
docility of our people under the workings of this 
process is one of the phenomena of the situation. 
They do not manifest the least consciousness, nation- 
ally, on the matter. 

But when we consider the naive candor of Japanese 
statesmen, publicists, and propagandists, understanding 
Japan is no longer a puzzle, as was said of a well-adver- 
tised American pacifist — it is a pursuit. 



CHAPTER XVII 
Back to the Ships 

It is obvious that the conflict between the United 
States and Japan is centered, not in racial and economical 
adaptation or amalgamation, but in moral principles 
of life, character, and national existence that find a 
manifestation in the Pacific and East Asia through the 
existence of China. And they would have had no 
chance to display themselves in that quarter had it 
not been for this greatest of all treasuries of life, and 
depositories of real and potential riches which is their 
present refuge on our west, and to our long connection 
therewith, and our acquisition of the Philippines. 

There, in China alone, those moral principles are 
bound up in the greatest symposium of solemn treaties 
between great and many nations that ever were written 
in recognition, protection, and support of organized 
empire, civilized society, nationality, sovereignty, in- 
tegrity, government, and human right. 

As Japan's deeds, national policy, and declarations 
proclaim her national assumption of the unfitness and 
unworthiness of China to the consideration framed in 
these treaties, we must know what is the matter with 
China that we cannot rightly and to our lasting good 
ever defend them. 

291 



292 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Many criticisms of China have been made. Nothing 
more need be said of what the Japanese think, and 
there remain the estimates of the West. I begin with 
ourselves. To me, the most original and interesting 
of all criticisms is the learned denunciation in inclosed 
epithets delivered in Peking during the reign of the 
Manchus by Doctor W. A. P. Martin, dean of sina- 
logues and missionaries in China, who said: "China 
is not a nation ; China is an old ash barrel, held to- 
gether by the Powers, with a hen inside, goose if you 
will, sitting on golden eggs." The excoriation passed 
unheeded then, for China, like Gallio, "cared for none 
of these things." And whether one called her "a 
dead whale on the ocean of international affairs", "a 
bone of international contention", "a boneless giant", 
"Maud Muller", "a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair", 
she cared not. And the few Chinese who heard the 
invidious comparisons out of the carping West squan- 
dered a little time in telling us how much the matter 
was overrated, convincing us that, of China, it was 
not so, anyway. "Big, unlearned, and poor"; "bear- 
ing the curse, truly, of a political hookworm" ; "having 
no intelligible self-expression"; the West took note 
of little more than that "many children played round 
her door." She was a decrepit and family-ridden old 
woman living in a golden shoe ; a nobody in the modern 
world, usurping a rich but tattered palace, while those 
who envied her the satisfaction of Demosthenes, the 
antiquity and glory of Cathay, and coveted the wealth 
and magnificence of her habitation, snatched at its 
fittings through the years and were laid beneath the 
slab that marks the resting places of all those who 
tried to hustle the East. 

But as the race never dies, criticism and diatribe 



BACK TO THE SHIPS 293 

went on until finally, about 1900, after every other 
virile people in the world had condemned the fate 
that through her apathy and indifference to the ways 
of the West had overtaken China, as the one most to 
be abhorred, came the last straw. Pacifists eulogized 
China for her policy of nonresistance. Then China 
woke up, and began to rub her eyes at the spectacle of 
the modern world. 

China had succeeded Turkey as the sick man of 
the world, and many physicians met at the diagnosis. 
The church came first. Since St. Francis Xavier had 
struck his staff upon the southern coast crying, "Oh 
rock, when wilt thou break?" China's malady had 
been heathenism. The clinic was made easy in those 
days, ere complications from modern merchandising 
and gunboating. What the matter was with China 
was perfectly simple. But as the church brought the 
leprosy of political domination, and added it to the 
itch of China's stagnation, China solved the problem 
of another disease thrust upon her by erasing the 
church. She was equal to prevention if not cure. 

Then came the Protestant missionary who stirred 
up nearly all the real stir China has had. And ever 
after, the dead level of criticism by the church was 
one of Chinese sin. The church continued to urge 
Christian belief upon China. Eminent laymen also 
held this view, commending missionary ministrations. 
This was the attitude of Robert Hart, whose opinion 
on all questions concerning China was held in re- 
spect. He once said that perhaps the best single 
action China could take would be that of adopting 
the Christian religion outright as the national faith. 
Even a Confucian scholar had offered the opinion that 
as Christianity was the prevailing religion of the most 



294 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

advanced and strongest countries, China should adopt 
it the same as she adopted Western sciences. 

This was after the Russian-Japanese War, and there 
was given in Peking an address by an eminent Prot- 
estant missionary on the same subject, but under the 
title: "The Question for China." The missionary's 
answer was an affirmative; the question for China 
was contained exclusively in the problem of what re- 
ligion she should have, and her salvation lay in adopt- 
ing Christianity. 

It was a sermon with a practical infirmity. It was 
fatal in its logic. Its remedy, to effect a cure, in- 
volved the universally dangerous process of swapping 
horses in midstream, while as an assertion, the answer 
to the question for China had this effectual refutation, 
namely, that although China had been acquainted 
with Christianity for several hundred years, never- 
theless, had any one asked the Chinese, hardly one 
could have been found out of the hundreds of millions 
to give the Sunday-school answer. On the contrary, 
the universal reply in China would have been that 
the question for China more than ever was one of 
driving the "foreign devils" from Christian nations 
into the sea. China had only just tried this, and the 
result was the greatest evidence she had yet uncovered 
of the primal correctness, if inexpediency, of that 
course. The farther China went, the more apparent 
this became to Chinese, and the more enlightened 
Chinese there were who found this unction creeping 
close to their hearts. 

The first to stir China, the first to get a reaction, 
were the missionaries. The elder Catholics stuck the 
goad into both China and Japan and got the Inqui- 
sition thrown into them in return. Thev snatched at 



BACK TO THE SHirS 295 

political power, but both China and Japan beat them 
to it. Trade got the next reaction ; it taught the 
mandarin to respect the integrity of merchants and 
the requirements of commercial intercourse. Still 
China was behindhand and committed the unpar- 
donable fault of getting into politics. China was 
behind time at Macao in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, at Canton in the eighteenth, at Nanking in 
1842, at Tientsin in 1857-1860, at Seoul in 1894, at 
Peking in 1900, with the Boxer uprising, as well as in 
1908-1910 respecting international loans. And al- 
though her movements were so rapid that in ten years 
she went farther than in the previous two thousand, 
she never was farther behind than in the matter of a 
reformed monarchy for 1916. And it was seen that if 
some other countries serving as drags to Western 
hustle and Eastern grab should go down, China would 
get the effect of the released force from all points of 
the compass and suffer the whole jolt. 

The political pace in China had been accelerated by 
material progress. Little happened between 1517, 
when the Portuguese came up the China Seas, and 
1840. It took from 1842 to 1860 for the West to get 
to Peking. Thirty-five years of silence then reigned. 
But consider the rapid-fire epochs since 1895 — one 
every two or three years, as defined by : Treaty of 
Shimonoseki, Boxer Uprising, Russian-Japanese War, 
foreign loans and financial and industrial reform, 
revolution, republic, loss of Chinese colonies, mon- 
archy, etc., all within twenty years. 

A generous, energetic, well-meaning, and deserving 
American thought to revive Persia and make the world 
love her as it did Turkey and China, but failed because 
Persia had been embalmed a long time before the Amer- 



296 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

ican physician came; that was why he was called. 
Except China, Turkey has been the only international 
bone the world of international bone-contenders cared 
about. And if Turkey is found to be embalmed, the 
fact that China is "yet alive" will make little initial 
difference to the political blubber-hunters. Except: 
It is in human nature that when the latter gather for 
the first time about a single carcass, the troubled 
spirit of John Hay may be treated to a soothing world 
chorus of "holy horror" that may bring a reaction, a 
pause in the riot of plunder, a breathing spell for 
China. 

A realization of all these things has left China's 
critics anything but niggardly. They have been most 
flattering. As a result China impersonates, as it 
were, the whole human race, and individual men and 
women are standing upon every hilltop, with ropes 
and life buoys in their hands, trying to save her. A 
very strong case has been made out against China. 
Its argumentations, and argu-fermentations have been 
heard for sixteen years, and while one's inclination is 
to despise and distrust them, history seems bent 
on writing the Chinese off the calendar because 
they have not been able to speed up. It is said 
that her whole defense has gone by the board, and 
she has failed in the last resort, the resort of arms. 
Even the Church would have condoned progress, 
civilization, and respect in the world, set up by the 
sword, but it was not of the Church or the world to 
condone China's hanging like a carcass upon the 
necks of those volunteering to help her. She was the 
champion political mendicant of creation, unwilling 
to raise a hand in her own behalf so long as some 
one would do it for her. She suspected the outer aid 



BACK TO THE SHIPS 297 

which took time by the forelock and offered itself, and 
it was only possible to be to her a disinterested friend 
when the wolves were not only about her but had 
their teeth in her trunk. 

Thus the critics pulled China into the last court and 
found her a military bankrupt. Political mendicancy, 
maintained as a continuous performance, effectually 
prevented her from making any defensive alliance. 
The fan, the umbrella, and the teapot had disap- 
peared as military weapons in the Chinese army so 
recently that they had had little influence in lighten- 
ing her as a helpless burden to the powers. When the 
Japanese first invaded Manchuria in 1894, the in- 
habitants had pulled their boats ashore for them at 
Pi-tzu-wo, and they repeated this gaucherie ten years 
later, when they did a similar service for the Russians. 
At Kinchou, a Chinese soldier suicided before a temple 
shrine rather than die on a battlefield of the Japan- 
China War. The capacity to make a military demon- 
stration that would give her the power of making an 
alliance, therefore, was not in her, and she was written 
off militarily as a dead weight of danger to any nation 
that might undertake singlehanded to defend her. 

In politics and war her situation was hopeless. She 
stood alone against the world. As I have described 
in another place, stark civilization was her opponent, 
"and even the massive organism of Chinese society 
might well be staggered at such a situation. Its 
dangers were reflected in the opinions held in the 
chancelleries of the great powers. She could not 
realize the menace of opposing plans laid for her by 
nations along her frontiers : already the powers had 
taken her foreign customs. She faced the ordeal of 
emancipating herself from foreign finance, and from 



298 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

foreign relations whose complications and dangers 
increased in the exact ratio of her rise to world con- 
sciousness. Moreover, some of her leaders professed 
indifference to these foreign questions which were the 
whole substance of her political existence, and to the 
fact that her fate as an entity was in the hands of four 
powers, whose territories completely surrounded her — 
Japan, Russia, Great Britain, and France. Other 
powers, like the United States, Germany, and the 
lesser European countries, could exercise little influ- 
ence over the Chinese policies of these four powers. 
Near or far, there was no border or outside nation to 
come to China's aid. There were no virile Manchu 
tribesmen left equal to leadership, as was the case in 
1644. In short, stronger outside peoples had worked 
out their own salvation without China, and China 
could expect nothing from them." 

China was without truth and honor. Having been 
tried and found wanting, China's Western diagnosti- 
cians and critics, including many eminent men from 
both Europe and America, came to East Asia to view 
the Confucian patient, and concurred in the criticism 
that China after her revolution meant, "not the few 
enlightened leaders, the Republicans, but the masses 
scourged by contagion and famine, burdened with a 
new poverty due to the higher economic plane of the 
nations that surround and antagonize her, and op- 
pressed by administrative anarchy. She was with- 
out efficient labor, was cursed by ignorance, had no 
common language or means of interstate, or even in 
many places, inter-neighborhood communication, no 
systematic currency or taxation, no internal national 
credit, no roads or other adequate communications, 
no money capital with which to elevate her economic 



BACK TO THE SHIPS 299 

plane, so as not to be ground between those of rich 
opposing nations. Her forests were impoverished, 
her rivers uncontrolled, and with an increasing popu- 
lation, the figure of government was gnawed at the 
knees by starvation." Nothing was left unsaid of 
China by many Western critics, except that Hell 
yawned to receive her. 

The chorus of calamity started by the Church, 
swelled by traders, diplomats, and financiers, and 
joined in by Western educators and intellectual leaders, 
had aroused China's neighbors. And at last above 
the din of revolution was heard a yet more terrible 
indictment. Of all things came the curse of Japan. 
The beneficiary had turned upon the benefactor : the 
whelp had attacked his sire. The Japanese then pro- 
nounced that condemnation which I have already 
given, so well known because of the caustic eloquence 
imparted to it by Okuma. On behalf of Japan, he 
proclaimed the end of China. 

And then the world woke up. It did not wake up 
as much as it wanted to, because the World War was 
coming on. But there were twinges of the Christian 
conscience, for the Christian awakenment prematurely 
of Japan, and the washing of Christian hands of Chris- 
tian keepership of victimized China. 

Time had made it easier and easier for everybody 
to criticize China. It was easy enough when the 
Church started the pace, when trade crystallized it in 
the world, and politics and diplomacy exploited it. It 
was easy enough before Japan took a hand in it. But 
when she became an example of progress, even to some 
Western nations, it became more easy to damn China 
than before it had been easy to complain of her. Chris- 
tian civilization has the shame of knowing that Japan 



300 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

has damned China in its eyes merely by her virtues of 
military self-preservation. Constituting a large part 
of the civilized world, in men and area, the world's 
real center, and in modern times the cynosure of all 
eyes, it can be said that "of all sad words of tongue or 
pen" in the Pacific, "the saddest are these, it might 
have been" that China would have beaten Japan to 
a place in the "family" of nations. China has that 
the matter with her which accounts for almost nothing 
having been said of her in the great war crisis of man- 
kind. Her only friend was America, and her only 
means of world expression the untrammeled, but 
"goat "-loving, vagarious, and irresponsible American 
press. 

It is easy to see that what I have already said is 
merely an attempt to express the multitudinous answers 
that have been returned respecting China in the past. 
To ask to-day what is the matter with China is a 
different thing. Up to the great epoch in China of 
1905-1911, the matter with China was that which is 
the matter with anybody whom everybody picks at. 
She was the acme of imperfection. But she was so 
bad, and all the rest of the world was so good, that 
each offset and nullified the other. The world had 
at last got suspicious and commenced to really look 
about in order to find out what actually was the matter. 
With grim humor, and a natural contempt for the 
perspicacity of the West, a beacon was hung out on 
Fujiyama, by Okuma, as I have explained, greatly 
illuminating the scene. Some good things were said 
of China. There was a man, now dead, whose cry 
had come up from the Yangtse Valley that more per 
capita happiness existed among Chinese than among 
any people or civilization. It was Archibald Little, 



BACK TO THE SHIPS 301 

and his voice was remembered. Robert Hart had 
confirmed the truth of the discovery that despised 
China alone had passed the acid test. It was then 
that the question became : What is the matter with 
China now? 

After the Russian-Japanese War, the situation for 
China was altered. A period of temporary confusion, 
and it became clear that China's trouble was Christian 
civilization's political irritant, modernized Japan. No 
enlightened Chinese would have held the view that the 
question for China was to drive out Western peoples. 
On the contrary. And at the beginning of 1915, 
Japan masked her beacon and answered the present 
question: "What is the matter with China?" with 
the political bombshell known as the demands upon 
China. 

In the rich kaleidoscope of changing events in 
China it would be wasting time to linger over the 
economical or ethical principles underlying these 
changes. All know the influence of Christian educa- 
tion, and of American institutions there. The increase 
of population in East Asia and the financial demands 
which accompany reform and progress are sufficient 
answer to explain the economic turmoil. The effects 
of the introduction of modern industrialism into East 
Asia, and of foreign competition there, are, in their 
general effects, everywhere clearly known. The as- 
sumption by Japan of industrial, commercial, and 
political leadership is also known. A glance at Jap- 
anese literature shows that Japanese thought, work- 
ing under the yet young Western yeast there, reeks 
with lugubrious reflections on Japan's wrongs and 
dangers at home and abroad, and Japan's destiny 
everywhere. Her policy everywhere confirms this to 



302 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

be the spirit of her agents. "Japan's population 
doubles itself in fifty years; ditto Korea, China; 
whites double in ninety years, sometimes never; 
Japan is the leader of East Asia and the Pacific ; there- 
fore the future and the world are to Japan, and East 
Asia under Japan." This describes the prevailing 
Japanese imperialists' notion of the world. The 
formidable ideas working under the shifts of the ka- 
leidoscope are therefore political, and furnish the only 
key to an interpretation of events. 

In a war of the five continents and the seven seas, 
as every one can see, it was China's fate to be again 
left behind. Picked at by mankind, and flopping along 
the strange road of the world, China, in the absence 
of the other great powers, was to be struck at by Japan. 
Thereupon came the quacks. It was found that the 
Chinese, on the apparent authority of the American 
adviser to the President, Professor of Constitutional 
Government, Frank J. Goodnow, could be compared 
to the mixed races of the unstable Latin-American 
States, which, without automatic succession in rulers, 
fall victims to military dictatorships, the worst form 
of government. And so, with Yuan Shih-k'ai's sanc- 
tion, his counsellors and henchmen, copying American 
pacifists, set going a Preservation of Peace Society, 
For what? Why, the gathering of monarchical sup- 
port, and the isolating of opposition to the president 
becoming emperor and saving China. 

This was strange, as Yuan from close studies during 
the last three years of the Manchu dynasty had con- 
cluded that not more than three tenths of the whole 
people belonged to the advanced party ; seven tenths 
were still conservative and satisfied with the regime 
of the empire; and if the revolutionists succeeded in 



BACK TO THE SHIPS 303 

overthrowing the dynasty, another revolution might 
take place headed by the conservatives, and having 
for its object the restoration to a monarchy. "And 
then there would be chaos for several decades." 

The conclusion seems obvious that Yuan Shih-k'ai 
was mistaken by the conspirators for the embodiment 
of both revolutionists and conservatives, or he never 
would have set out to mount the throne, as he did 
immediately after Japan's demands. 

It was a conspiracy. But, too, it was a conspiracy 
to save China with the hand of iron. In a few weeks 
all the parts of its hollow machinery were in the hands 
of the Republicans and of the foreign powers, includ- 
ing Japan — propaganda, telegram forms, codes, pass- 
words, and everything. And the Republicans had 
secretly paralleled the conspiracy with a plan of re- 
bellion. 

The machine was set in motion on August 30, 1915. 
On October 7, it emitted the set process for nominating 
Yuan Shih-k'ai as emperor. On December 11, Yuan's 
Council of State read the votes of the monarchist's 
agents in the provinces electing him emperor, and 
tendered him the throne. On December 29, Yuan gave 
orders to attack the Republican rebels, in arms against 
his usurpation. He put the crown away, but on 
January 2, 1916, entered the palace in the imperial 
yellow chair of the last dynasty, sat on the throne, 
received officials, and the salutation of "Imperial 
Majesty", and appointed the Minister of Agriculture 
and Commerce as a special envoy to the world, — well, 
to Tokio, — to announce the new reign. The envoy was 
given a final reception and entertainment by Japan's 
representative at his legation in Peking, and then, as 
the departure for Tokio was about to occur, Japan de- 



304 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

livered to China a notification that the mission, headed 
by the special envoy, could not be received in Japan. 
On January 22, Yuan Shih-k'ai postponed the mon- 
archy, and on March 22 resumed the republic. The 
new revolution was on. 

Japan had struck government by Chinese, at Peking, 
which was setting out to save itself, a telling blow be- 
tween the eyes, and placed itself in line with the rising 
revolution. What the quacks failed to see was that 
a monarchy could come in China only out of great 
stress and trial, such as had produced a republic, and 
such only as could produce the man for a monarchy, as 
it had produced the man for the republic. The situ- 
ation found Japan with all the great powers save Ger- 
many and America at her back, still the master on the 
mainland, with no promise of help from the outside 
world. She was in line with the now enraged and 
winning Republicans. Then came a characteristic 
Chinese patriot's analysis of the situation of his coun- 
try. E. S. Ling, in a plea for the republic, thus made 
one of the latest summaries of what is the matter with 
China. 1 Condensed to a few flaming phrases it was : 
"It is heartrending to depict the situation of our 
country. Fellow countrymen ! China to-day is at 
stake ! And her peril is ' so imminent as to burn the 
eyebrows.' The struggle is not one against race or 
creed, but one against brothers of the same family. 
Nothing is more tragic and suicidal than civil war. It 
serves as a stepping stone to territorial acquisition by 
some greedy power. 'While the kingfisher and the 
oyster are contending, then the fisherman reaps the 
benefit' — of seizing both." 

In short, the struggle was one of uniting to oppose 

1 North China Herald. 



BACK TO THE SHIPS 305 

the "greedy power." All through the monarchical 
conspiracy is woven also the thread of suspicion of 
Japan. In some places Japan is named outright, in 
others she is referred to as "a certain foreign power." 
She is charged with having "lately forced England 
and Russia to take part in tendering advice to China 
[against the monarchy] under the pretext that the 
Chinese people are not of one mind and that troubles 
are to be apprehended." Later the monarchists at 
Peking telegraphed secretly to their agents the fol- 
lowing : "As a divergence of opinion exists between 
Japan and the Entente Powers, the advice is of no 
great effect. Besides, the Elder Statesmen and the 
Military Party in Japan are all opposed to the action 
[as above] taken by their Government." Yuan Shih- 
k'ai and the monarchists were described by onlookers 
as engaged in a death grapple with Japan, and they 
were seeking advantage in the prospect of a divergence 
of opinion and policy between the civil and the military 
parties in Japan. 

On the other hand, under the ever present shadow of 
Japan's demands, the official republican loyalists who 
rose up to suppress the monarchy, after charging 
Yuan Shih-k'ai with impoverishing and debasing the 
country, and setting the people against each other, and 
setting forth his failure, at a time of "temporary re- 
lief from external danger in consequence of interna- 
tional friction, to improve this hairbreadth chance of 
saving our nation", said thus : "he has proclaimed him- 
self Emperor, and this at a time of imminent national 
danger. Were a man standing by the side of his dying 
father to seize a knife and stab him, what else would 
so conscienceless a person not dare? And yet this is 
just the thing Yuan Shih-k'ai is doing to his country." 



306 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

In November, 1913, Sun Yat-sen, first President 
of the Republic of China, who had taken refuge in 
Japan on the recent collapse of the second revolu- 
tionary rebellion, said : "I did not rebel against Yuan; 
I opposed him because of the policy of assassina- 
tion and suppression he had adopted in order to 
prepare China for a monarchy. He has gone so far 
now that the only possible outcome of his course must 
be for him to make himself Emperor. He will do 
that." 

So he did: no doubt with the object of saving 
China, saving it "in a time of international danger", 
by a "hairbreadth chance", from a "greedy power." 
The image of Yuan Shih-k'ai as a parricide, drawn by 
the Republicans to show China's situation, is sufficient 
evidence of what their conception of it was. Whether 
defined by Republicans or monarchical conspirators, 
the matter with China remains the same. With all 
the other great powers absent from East Asia, it centers 
itself in Japan — Japan, the Chinese patriot's bugbear, 
his bete noir. 

Japan welcomes this distinction. It is no longer a 
point of Western etiquette in relations with our Jap- 
anese friends to soft-pedal this theme. Japan's most 
eminent men, public and private, have served notice 
to mankind in a thousand ways that Japan has put her 
hand to the Asiatic plow. The whole world's inter- 
national firmament has been blazoned with that intel- 
ligence ever since the runaway n'th-power arc-light 
of her demands upon China replaced the beacon on 
Fujiyama. In simple words, therefore, the innocent 
onlooker must say that what is the matter with China 
is Japan. 

A country that in ten years has moved farther and 



BACK TO THE SHIPS 307 

faster than in the two thousand preceding years cannot 
justly be condemned from without. In the existing 
conditions China's question is external. Her problem 
is what can she do with Japan? The only answer to 
this question is that suggested by the rapid progress 
to consciousness in China, and by the military progress 
of the world generally. The most hopeful sign in 
China since the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty 
was the rebellion against recurrent monarchy. Its 
success demonstrated an important fact in Chinese 
progress, namely, that the Chinese know where they 
are going. It showed that a change of their form of 
government could not be made any longer by con- 
spiracy, that though they might know nothing about 
the fine points of a republic, they now knew how to 
assert their new birthright of volition in affairs that 
are a key to the interests of the whole world. Chinese 
will have justified their independence of foreign ad- 
vice, and a great many other Chinese prerogatives, by 
successfully wielding the cudgels to right their wrongs. 
The bravery and peculiar efficiency of the Chinese 
soldier have never been successfully attacked. His 
greatest defamer has been his literary brother within. 
The American soldier of fortune, General Frederick 
Townsend Ward, by his success in building up an 
army that eventually broke in China the T'ai-ping 
Rebellion, long ago revealed in the Chinese a great 
reservoir of military talent, a martial mass which no 
plummet can measure. Christianity, foreign advice, 
reform, development, all have been panaceas offered for 
the salvation of China. It may be that the personal 
sacrifice of a Ward or the help of a Gordon is what she 
needs most. There is no manner of doubt that if she 
could roundly thrash Japan, not only all China's worst 



308 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

troubles would be solved, but all those which Japan 
rails against. China is aware of the value of thrash- 
ing Japan, or any large nation, and of the fact that 
from it there would accrue to her spiritual and material 
blessings greater than from everything else she could 
do combined. The light of history, awakened knowl- 
edge, and reason commend to her the treasure of the 
sword, the very "jewel in the lotus" of self-preserva- 
tion and national life. She is reading the prophets 
and sages who make Jehovah Himself jealous of its 
power, and fearful that its secrets will be accepted at 
their full value by the world. That the Chinese are 
on the point of discovering this secret of a divine aid, 
and a certain friend in time of danger to four hundred 
millions, was one of the things revealed in Japan's 
demands. 

In 1906, David Starr Jordan, the eminent scholar, 
educator, writer, and pacifist, in a baccalaureate 
address at Bryn Mawr College, pronounced the French 
an effete people furnishing a conspicuous illustration 
of racial decay in Western civilization. 

In 1916, David Lloyd George, the eminent English 
statesman arid Minister of Munitions said: "No 
nation has reached the heights of the moral grandeur 
of France during the war. I set her as England's 
constant model. Soldiers and generals show qualities 
of endurance, courage, and military skill worthy of 
the highest deeds of Napoleon's army. We are now 
too close properly to judge the immortal pages written 
by France in the book of history, but historians of the 
future will write of the splendid deeds of her sons in 
letters of gold." 

France's effeteness, essentially ascribed for years to 
her inability to see France over-populated by French- 



BACK TO THE SHIPS 309 

men, and to overflow her borders with immigrants to 
other lands, was under the close scrutiny of all man- 
kind ! 

The kind of "effeteness" pronounced against China 
was due largely to her inability to limit her population. 
The only moral which reason can draw from these 
considerations is that in determining a course of action 
for the individual or the nation, especially with respect 
to an innocent or unoffending and worthy people, 
incomparably great, it is better to be guided by the 
dictates of humanity and morality than by the judg- 
ments of learning. Not only can no man judge to-day 
what a people may be to-morrow : he cannot with 
appreciable certainty determine wholly what they 
are to-day. China to-day is more massive, greater, 
and more hopeful than she has ever been. "She has 
a full appreciation of her past, and has received great 
gifts from the West. This is indeed, to her, the true 
Golden Age" which it is possible for her to make 
permanent. A nation whose concern in the Pacific 
since 1784 has been directed to maintaining a policy 
of safeguarding China in the integrity of her territory 
and sovereignty, to securing equality of right among 
nations there, and to protection for future generations 
of Chinese of their birthright and heritage, has a task 
from the prosecution of which it will never need to 
recede. On those principles it can reassemble the 
charts by which, from 1784, its ships have reached the 
Pacific, and build decks from which to contend for its 
integrity in the theater of the world's future greatest 
events. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Blows from Japan 

The gulf that yawns between China and Japan is 
the same as that between Japan and the United States, 
which was unwittingly measured at the time of Japan's 
demands upon China, by President Wilson. Regard- 
ing our own demands with respect to the policy of 
Germany, whose submarines had sunk the Lusitania, 
he declared that we asked no more for ourselves than 
we asked for humanity. That doctrine, the doctrine 
of the Open Door and equal right, was more foreign 
and homeless in the Pacific than in the Atlantic. The 
Open Door, as it had been understood and developed 
since the days when we first came as free traders to 
China, and before, had passed away. We were nearer 
in understanding to China than to Japan. We were 
one with China in our conception of the future. Re- 
specting Japan, we were at the poles apart in concep- 
tion of the future. 

Even Bryan's dictum in connection with our with- 
drawal from the loans, namely, that securing first the 
moral and religious welfare of the Chinese people was 
the best basis for commerce and trade, was as offen- 
sive to Japan as our enterprises in finance and industry. 
The missionary and teacher, as shown in Korea, and 
as testified to in the Japanese press, was as repugnant 

310 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 311 

to Japan's traders as to her "kulturists." Japan was 
as incensed at the revolutionary effects in China of 
American teaching and cultural influence as she was 
at the impertinence and blunders of our diplomacy. 
When her demands were applied to China, American 
missionaries at Peking sent a cable dispatch of several 
thousand words to President Wilson, invoking his 
interference to shield the work of Christian civilization 
in China from the menace of Japan's aggressions. The 
cable tolls, amounting to more than five thousand 
dollars, were so extravagant and costly that they 
could be paid only by the Chinese exchequer. Several 
delegations from the American missions and their 
institutions in China, from the Yangtse Valley to 
Peking, called on the Secretary of State and the Presi- 
dent, at Washington, and laid before them the con- 
ditions of insecurity and the menace to cultural inter- 
course and international freedom already existing in 
Japan's interference in China and the threat of an 
extension to China, in the appreciable future, of such 
conditions of missionary and cultural work as had 
developed in Korea. 

The rift which separated us in East Asia at the 
same time was emphasized by our differences in this 
hemisphere. We were negotiating over the question 
of Japanese rights in California. We utterly failed to 
reach an agreement; we had no common ground. 
Unable to move our Government to interfere in Cali- 
fornia, Ambassador Chinda rose to leave the State 
Department, asking disappointedly respecting the 
refusal: "Is that the last word?" And Secretary 
Bryan replied: "There is no last word between 
friends." 

Nevertheless, the rift was widened and deepened. 



312 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

As a bridge across the gulf that lies between us, or as 
a bar to the fleets and armies of the Pacific, this pro- 
testation of friendship was frail and untrustworthy. 
It could not stand the test of the great ques- 
tion between the United States and Japan, which is 
one respecting the rights of nations in East Asia, and 
does not depend on the social and racial relations of 
the two civilizations in the Western Hemisphere, 
which is a subsequent issue. 

The Japanese leaders of aggression and expansion 
see that the weakness of their case lies in their not ante- 
dating us, in rights and treaties, and the influences of 
learning, culture, and national institutions, and in all 
that concerns other foreign rights, in East Asiatic 
affairs. They therefore seek to graft themselves upon 
the Chinese stalk, and by domination of the Chinese, 
stand for the Chinese, as well as for themselves, in all 
Asiatic issues with us. 

If Japan could be got to adopt a "Monroe Doctrine" 
for East Asia, the gulf might be bridged and the great- 
est difficulty between the civilizations across the Pacific 
solved. So long as Japan forcibly demands special 
rights on the continent, concessions, expansion of her con- 
tinental population, perpetual leases, land, extraterri- 
toriality, sovereignty, and exclusion of Western peoples, 
her policy cannot be compared to the Monroe Doctrine. 
It cannot be called the policy of the right of the un- 
advanced to unhampered self-development. 

Ito was the advocate of the policy in Japan nearest 
to that defined by the Monroe Doctrine. But Komura 
dressed him up in a political garb, along with other 
Japanese statesmen, in which he became unrecog- 
nizable to himself, and was caught dead in that garb 
at Harbin. It was like decapitation, as understood 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 313 

by the Chinese, with Ito's body wandering about Pur- 
gatory looking for its head, and uttering curses upon 
Komura. The Monroe Doctrine for East Asia, so 
far as it was possible, was buried with Ito. In order 
to draw near to the Monroe Doctrine principle in East 
Asia, Japan must reverse her policy and go in the 
opposite direction. Does any one believe she will 
do it? If she will not, the Pacific problem goes for- 
ward under full headway. 

Japan will not reach that place in the road again. 
She has gone too far. She entered China in the mean- 
time by a back door. She came in by way of the 
Russian frontier through special rights claimed on the 
basis of equal rights with Russia, and with Russia 
promoted expansion to cut China off from the rest of 
the world. Nobody can be in doubt as to what was 
Japan's aim in setting adrift this great body of the 
human race. It was evidently the same as in the 
case of Korea, namely, that by doing so, and by 
manipulating other powers, she could bring China 
under her own control. 

Such a result would warn the West or such part of 
it as continues to believe in treaties, and the peaceful 
elevation of East Asia, to resume the fight for freedom, 
democracy, and the rights of nations. Since August 
1, 1914, nobody believes that in the struggle of Western 
nations in the past that fight had been won. Even had 
it been, those rights would still have to be defended in 
the Pacific. If we are not prepared to be driven like 
dumb coolies to the fate of the Pacific, we can only 
dispute with every means in our power the expulsion 
from treaty countries in East Asia, by Japan, of West- 
ern peoples and influences and their regulation through 
Tokio. 



S14 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

After her demands made upon China, it was clear 
that the Japanese leaders thought they could go back 
and make things over, so far as America is concerned, 
on the ground of the failure of Western civilization to 
meet Japan's immigrants halfway in this hemisphere. 
If that is their thought, America will know how to 
prepare for it. It is no doubt the motive for the propa- 
ganda kept up in the United States, and a proper un- 
derstanding of that motive and propaganda will come 
first. When we have reached some conclusions among 
ourselves on this point, we will understand more 
clearly Japan's object in fighting old quarrels. 

A country that is carving its frontiers out of other 
people's preserves has to make many explanations. 
Perhaps the worst evil of Japanese explanations is 
that they pass current in this country, and many people 
who acquiesce in them are inclined to believe only 
good of the Japanese and only evil of ourselves. And 
one day when it is necessary, or worth while to a cal- 
culating people, these too numerous protestations will 
be resented. The confusion among both peoples thus 
caused, preventing them from clearly separating the 
two issues, which are spread ages apart by history, 
treaty, and right, has been made to suit precisely the 
needs of Japanese policy and utilized accordingly. 
But the more insistent Japanese become in mixing and 
reversing the issues, the more violent will be the clamor 
for war in both countries. 

Coming so late upon the scene of international 
affairs in East Asia and the Pacific, as well as abroad, 
the opportunity to go back and make things over was 
the signal which in 1903 pointed out to Japan her great 
role of military conquest. To recover advantages 
which she was satisfied to ignore when others were 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 315 

trying to bring East Asia into the path of modern 
knowledge and progress, and rights she never possessed, 
she was obliged to resort to force and injustice. 

It was not new in the world — it was the course of 
her ancient Asiatic and European predecessors whom 
she chose to imitate. Epithets that were long hurled 
between Europe and East Asia were cast back and 
forth in the Pacific. In 1903, Russia advised Japan 
to occupy herself with domestic and internal develop- 
ment. In 1905, Japan returned the compliment. In 
1910, in the selection of July 4 as the date of Japanese 
emancipation of Russia's affairs from the restraint of 
the principles of the Open Door, and Japan's inde- 
pendence of the obligations which Western civilization 
and international law laid upon all nations in East 
Asia, she began against us the petty but vindictive 
innuendo with which she had, it must be admitted, 
promoted a successful conquest of her fighting op- 
ponents, notably Russia. In her advice to Germany, 
in 1914, at Kiaochou, she employed the very divinely 
retributive phrases in which, with Russia and France, 
Germany had warned her out of Liaotung. And in 
1915, at Peking, she advised the rest of the world in 
the same way. 

"Japan never forgets," and she has furnished all 
the evidence to show that she is engaged in avenging 
old insults, in more than evening up old scores. Her 
surreptitious demands made upon China showed she 
trusted nobody; she had no friends. Was it to be 
expected next that, to opportunely electrify the world, 
she would attack Spain in some strategical diplomatic 
center, for the political grudge she bore her in the 
seventeenth century, on account of the pretensions of 
the Pope's religion ? Was that to become the organic 



316 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

reason of her latest resentment of our presence in the 
Philippines? And would she fight every one, as she 
had advised and threatened every one, on occasion, 
because, as Nitobe said, the Western powers at one 
time, about "forty years ago, seriously discussed the 
partitioning of Japan ? " 

We laughed when Japan turned their own phrase- 
ology upon Russia, France, and Germany. There 
was a great silence when she played with the date of 
the foundation of American independence and the 
principles of the national existence of the United 
States. I have waited until this return to the incident 
of the selection of July 4 as the date for the Japanese- 
Russian "predatory pact", to make a necessary slight 
analysis of this diplomatic torpedo left upon our track 
in the Pacific, for our elevation. To do the people 
justice, they were too indifferent or too ignorant to 
resent the Japanese innuendo. But it was a circum- 
stance that could not escape detection, and it deserves 
careful psychological study. 

The Government of the United States never has 
sought to insult the Japanese nation. Americans be- 
lieve it incapable of doing so. Yet Japan, through its 
highest office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, appears 
to have made the most careful arrangements to put 
itself on record in the title role of international insult 
across the Pacific by methods peculiarly associated in 
the minds of Western peoples with the petty, des- 
picable, and "Oriental." While felicitating the nation 
officially through its ambassadors and ministers in no 
less than forty-eight capitals of the world, and through 
its consuls-general, and consuls, in a score times as 
many American consulates-general and consulates of 
the world, to say nothing of the official felicitations on 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 317 

the decks of our war vessels in their stations in the 
world's ports, and the direct felicitations of the Jap- 
anese Foreign Office at our Embassy in Tokio and at 
the State Department at Washington, the Japanese 
Foreign Office executed this pact for a Japanese-Rus- 
sian Asiatic doctrine. Its officers either executed it 
and went out to felicitate their American colleagues, 
or they went out and felicitated them and came back 
to execute it. It was all done on the same day, July 
4, 1910. 

That "the Japanese are a proud and sensitive people, 
who prefer to be wronged rather than insulted" is a 
gratuitous euphony in the vocabulary of Japan's self- 
appointed American defenders, which has always had 
the respect of American critics of Japan. If this is 
so of the Japanese, the depth of their anguish when 
wronged is somewhat measured by the insults of which 
their leaders on occasion are capable. And their suffer- 
ings are not without a compensating talent. 

We did not have a war with Japan in ten years as 
Harriman thought. By surrender at every point of 
contact in the Pacific, except in California, and by the 
World War, we were brought to avoid it. Japan 
eliminated us for the present because she could ; it 
was a feasible undertaking, like any ordinary diplo- 
matic project. We kicked against the pricks, but we 
retired because we would not fight and would not 
compromise. We can see that any pact with Japan 
is one in which we would pay, along with China. Even 
Russia had not pretended that she was sharing with 
Japan. She merely began paying on demand, by 
installment, the high price for her pact which she re- 
fused to pay in an indemnity after the Russian-Japanese 
War. 



318 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Conditions in the Atlantic, because of the World 
War, then came to a state resembling those in the 
Pacific. It had been as out of place for us to sanction 
the Japanese policies of the Europe-Japan alliance in 
the Pacific as it was now to sanction central European 
policies in the Atlantic. It was as out of place to 
countenance in the Pacific a Japanese policy sanctioned 
by Europe as it would be to practise in the Atlantic 
the policy of Japan. Should we basely accept the so- 
called inevitable biological facts that are said to sanc- 
tion the making of a bloated and unnatural Japanese 
empire out of other peoples' territories in the Pacific, 
as have Turkey, Austria, and Germany in Europe, for 
example, the godlessness of the Pacific would be com- 
plete so far as government is concerned, and we would 
have surrendered our principles and accepted those 
involved in the fate of Belgium and Serbia. The 
choice offered us by Shibusawa was absolutely un- 
thinkable to the American mind, as it was previously 
to the British, and impossible to the American con- 
science. No government could be tolerated that at- 
tempted to strike such a bargain with Japan. 

We drew even farther away than if Japan had not 
made to us those gauche overtures expressed by Okuma, 
Shibusawa, and others whom I have quoted, and 
which Ito probably never would have made. Our 
people in China complained that we abandoned them. 
Our natural policy being one that takes more force to 
support and stick to than any other we might be per- 
suaded to adopt, by powers like Japan, Russia, or 
even Germany, we left them behind. But it is not 
conceivable that Americans can be persuaded from 
it. If they are not traduced in succession by their 
politicians, they will return to the Pacific. 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 319 

It is possible that we have overplayed our hand in 
East Asia in the matter of educational and political 
influences, especially in the development of Japan, 
somewhat as Germany overplayed in this country in 
connection with the World War. It is possible that, 
true to human nature, or "biology", the Japanese 
can never forgive us for being their predecessors and 
leaders, in the Pacific, that is. We know that a record 
clear of having deprived any nation or people of civ- 
ilized liberty, freedom, territory, sovereignty, — clear 
of revenge, — is not enough. To give and take in 
international affairs, to be fair, will not see us through. 
We have to arm. A country that desires to keep an 
exalted foreign policy needs a larger military than one 
which, by pulling and hauling and trading with other 
powers, pursues a selfish course of aggrandizement. 
The latter confines the field of hostile contact to the 
direction of its selfish aims, and by sharing the spoils 
with whom it must, extends around itself the area of 
neutrality. The former has to rely upon the honor 
and far-seeing discernment of nations and a belief that 
they are not totally depraved. 

Our problem is large, but the line of our movement 
is that of the principles on which our country was es- 
tablished; they are the same as in the Open Door 
doctrine, and we cannot change them. We have no 
certain way of massing our people behind our Gov- 
ernment and our Government behind the inclinations 
and aspirations of our people, as has Japan. But our 
experiences in China and the affairs of the Atlantic 
have exercised a lasting influence over our foreign 
affairs. They have been the instrument that molded 
reform of home and foreign banking, communications, 
and foreign trade methods which may be seen in 



320 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

movements to strengthen our position throughout the 
three Americas and in the world ; and though we can- 
not hope to be the diplomatic genius of international 
coalitions that Japan is, nevertheless events must shape 
themselves to the same ends in the Pacific that we are 
pursuing in the Atlantic. And if America, the de- 
mocracy, is to continue to exist, it will be because the 
gulf between the policy in the Atlantic and that in the 
Pacific has been closed up, and the rights of all nations 
there, large or small, strong or weak, are respected. 

We have to cherish with an indelible recollection 
that it was Japan that prevented the realization of 
our trade and the mutual benefits of commerce, and 
by our answer demonstrate to her that we accept the 
gauntlet she has thrown down. Japan has fought 
our influence on the continent and in the territories 
of our ancient friends since before 1880, when she 
resented our effort at opening Korea. According to 
the semi-official testimony of her Year Book and many 
public official and unofficial utterances, she blames us 
largely for the necessity of keeping up her big military 
program. There is no better way of knowing what 
her civilization thinks of us, and what its conception 
of our civilization, its institutions and aims, is than 
by what that civilization is doing internationally. 
And what it is so doing is expressed in arms. It 
seems to act from a belief that our civilization has 
traduced it. All the paradoxes of Japanese character 
are reproduced in Japan's world position. Nothing 
could justify her in her course so much as a repudiation 
altogether of Western civilization to allow her to 
fulfill what she conceives to be her manifest destiny. 
Then we would be at the poles apart. And this is the 
logical outcome of her policy since 1905. 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 321 

Although Japan has no friends among nations, she 
has partners. And there is one great fact about her 
international position : she manipulates Europe on 
our western frontier. China attracted Europe to the 
Indies, to East Asia. But Japan made it back up her 
own power in the Pacific area. In 1905, Japan deter- 
mined not to let us have Europe for our historic doc- 
trine of equality and right in East Asia and on our 
west. She created the Manchurian allies to prevent 
that. We preferred Open Door Europe in China. 
She gave us Japan and the principles of Prussia in 
China and in the Pacific. Whether we are entitled to 
the domination of the Pacific or desire it is no longer 
the question. The Pacific is in the possession of the 
Manchurian allies in the person of Japan. 

Besides the United States, Japan has other nations 
that still fear her; and in further evidence that since 
the July 4, 1910, predatory pact to exclude the 
United States and Open Door influences guarding 
Chinese integrity and sovereignty, she manipulates 
Europe on our western frontier, Japan, on July 7, 1916, 
announced a new convention with Russia which the 
Foreign Office at Tokio summarized for publication 
thus : 

"First — Japan will not participate in any political 
arrangement or combination against Russia, which 
assumes the same obligations. 

"Second — In case one country's Far Eastern terri- 
torial rights and special interests recognized by the 
other are menaced, both Japan and Russia will confer 
on methods to be taken with a view to mutual support 
and cooperation in order to protect and defend these 
rights and interests." 

"These rights and interests" repeatedly described 



SM THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

by Japan and Russia, as I have shown, are special 
rights and interests, not equal rights and common 
interests as related by Japan and the United States, 
for instance, in the Root-Takahira agreement, and all 
of them belonging to the one are "recognized by the 
other" country. A most illuminating comparison of 
this with the former pact and its preceding entente, 
in the light of present history, is left to the reader. 

This second pact was not signed on July 4. With 
no diplomacy, and no ships, Uncle Sam was by this 
time nearly out of sight in East Asia and the Pacific. 
It was signed on July 3. Like the Root-Takahira con- 
vention, it was a fear agreement. The Westminster 
Gazette of London rather inadvertently let the cat out 
of the bag when it said of the new pact: "Russia is 
no longer pursuing ambitions in the Far East." It 
meant that Japan's ambitions were enough to take 
Russia's breath away, that equality of "special rights", 
or "fifty-fifty" with Japan, was good enough, and 
Russia could confidently leave things in Japan's hands. 
And as Japan was going strong, it was better to be in 
her hands than to get in her way. 

The text of this convention was withheld from pub- 
lication, and we were left to find out its most important 
stipulations "somewhere in" future time and event, 
probably when it was too late. But enough became 
known at the time of announcement to show that the 
convention was another capitulation by Russia to the 
importunities and menace of Japan, not only to the 
extent of pledges of support, but of material interests. 
Petrograd let it be known that in a supplementary 
arrangement, Russia surrendered to Japan the railway 
connecting Japan's South Manchurian railway system 
with the Sungari River, and recognized Japanese right 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 323 

on the Sungari as far down as Petuna in Mongolia, a 
city wherein, since her war with Japan, Russia had 
been seeking a barrier to Japanese expansion. 

Russia's delicate balance in East Asia, represented 
in these doings between herself and Japan, was un- 
mistakably disclosed by her Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
Sergius Sazonoff, who was thus quoted by the Petro- 
grad Bourse Gazette: "The present [World] war," said 
he, "opens up a series of problems for Russia, the solu- 
tion of which necessitates our confining our attention 
to the West [Europe] for many years. Relying on 
our solidarity with Japan as regards Far Eastern ques- 
tions, we can devote all our energies to the solution 
of these problems with the assurance that no power 
will take unfair advantage of China to carry out its 
ambitions." 

Certainly not ! Japan had only done that steadily 
since the World War set in, beginning immediately 
upon the occupation of Kiaochou and German Shan- 
tung, ordering China to extend Japan's expiring lease 
of Liaotung in Manchuria, and the railway there, to 
ninety-nine years, and enforcing the bulk of the 
demands of January-May, 1915, already described. 
But the real anxiety of Russia was not for China's 
welfare ; it related to unfair advantage being taken of 
Russia in the carrying out of ambitions in East Asia. 
When comparison is made with the comments of the 
other members of the predatory pact, it will be seen 
even more glaringly than the reader has already ob- 
served, how complete is the distrust in this comment 
by Sazonoff, by omission of every syllable that might 
express even the least trust of Japan. 

But the fullest explanation of the new charter of 
Japan's loosed pack in East Asia and the Pacific was 



324 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

given by Japan's Premier, Count Okuma, and printed 
on July 8, in the New York Times. It said : 

"The purposes of the Russo-Japanese convention 
are an extension of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. It 
aims to preserve Far Eastern peace. Japan cannot 
bear China's long political disturbances, upsetting 
Japanese commercial interests in China, whose com- 
mercial development brings the most benefit to Japan 
on account of geographical contiguity. 

"Japan welcomes American money and investments 
and will steadfastly maintain the open door policy in 
China. There is a full understanding with Great 
Britain, who welcomes the new convention indorsing 
the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. 

"The reason Japan does not want to take the full 
burden of Far Eastern peace alone is that Japan is 
afraid of being misunderstood by other powers, es- 
pecially China. Japan welcomes any power's activity 
to maintain Far Eastern peace and commercial develop- 
ment. 

"Japan has no ambition for Chinese territory. The 
territorial ambition of the old timers is a dream. Japan 
annexed Korea and leased the Manchurian Railway 
zones, as Japan's existence was menaced. ... I am 
sure the powers understand Japan's attitude toward 
China, seeing that Japan welcomes any powers' activity 
for Chinese peace. Japan is unable to steal China's 
territory when the former is openly cooperating with 
other powers. 

"Tell Americans we heartily welcome their com- 
mercial and industrial activity in China. America 
has enormous capital, which, if commercially and in- 
dustrially invested in China, will further Japan's trade 
with China." 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 325 

Exactly. The purposes of the convention are exten- 
sion of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, to preserve Japo- 
Russo-Anglo-Franco East Asiatic peace. And thereby 
"bring the most benefit to Japan", especially at a time 
when lack of European capital for development of 
China, and "disturbances in China" caused by fear 
and resentment of Japan and Japan's acts, and the 
struggle for light and life, "upsets Japanese commer- 
cial interests." 

American capital, gelded and shorn of all trade- 
carrying rights and plunderable by the predatory pack, 
the moment it is invested, shorn of government pro- 
tection and diplomatic guidance and care, and the 
"commercial and industrial activity in China", of 
Americans, is "welcome", because "America has enor- 
mous capital which, if commercially and industrially 
invested in China will further Japan's trade with 
China." And with all the Pacific for that matter, 
especially that trade between America and China. 
This is only Baron Shibusawa's proposal that in the 
future of the Pacific we take the bonds and give Japan 
the stock. The Honorable Hashimura Togo's knowl- 
edge of America has undoubtedly been recently dis- 
seminated in Japan, possibly carried home by Baron 
Shibusawa himself. Nothing seems to be lacking in 
light upon Japan's reasoning and view of things, except 
private official and authoritative Petrograd, London, 
and Paris views as to the ability of Japan to " steal 
China's territory" singly or for them all, "when the 
former [Japan] is openly cooperating with the other 
powers [that is, Russia, Britain, and France — the 
Manchurian Allies]", and whether under present con- 
ditions they prefer Japan should do it. It would con- 
tribute to reviving the gaiety of nations, if known. 



326 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

With such a reinforced bond as this pact, among 
the predatory pack of Manchurian allies, Japan's 
leaders had lost their erstwhile resentment respecting 
American "dollar diplomacy" exercised through capital 
and physical interests in China. Eleven years after 
Komura first started Japan on the pursuit of an alliance 
with Russia, we see the old veteran pilot-statesman, 
Okuma, with the second compact between his knees, 
resting on his oars as he talks to the American corre- 
spondent about the ship of state. When he had 
finished, British unction felicitated and regaled the 
pack. The London Daily Chronicle said : "This further 
step toward the definition of the relations of the powers 
in the quarter of the world which is always more or 
less debatable cannot but be acceptable to Great 
Britain, whose special interests in the Far East, it is 
being universally recognized, do not conflict with 
those of any of our allies and are indeed strengthened 
by the agreement among our friends." That has the 
smug, grandiose sound of Secretary Knox's announce- 
ment of the completion of his diplomatic plan, toward 
which the action of the American Government had been 
directed, in Manchuria, a long time ago. So also the 
following from the London Morning Post: "This 
drawing together of our two allies is an event that 
must be as gratifying to British sentiments as it is 
wholly consonant with British interests." 

Friends all. Four minds with but a single thought, 
four hearts that beat as one. Which reminds us that 
it has been hitherto inconceivable in political circles 
as well as in scientific and literary, how four civilized 
nations having less practical interests in common, more 
unlike racially, temperamentally, and in traditions, 
than the Saxon, the Japanese, the Slav, and the Gaul, 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 327 

could be assembled together in compact, a consumma- 
tion of which a high and brilliant British officer said 
in 1903, when the affiliation began: "The representa- 
tives of the two great Western cultures have joined 
with the two nations of savages." That, no doubt, 
has been forgotten both by the Briton who said it 
and the Frenchman who agreed to it. 

But perhaps only the London Times, still the fore- 
most exponent of authoritative British opinion, though 
no longer "The Thunderer" of British thought, most 
clearly defined the new pact and made it finally most 
certain that its signatories would never lead either 
China or the United States into misunderstanding the 
whole of them, or any one of them. It said: "The 
cardinal merit of the agreement is that it constitutes a 
fresh guarantee against the insidious efforts to sow 
dissension between the signatories." And contrary 
to what Russia herself always has said, and many 
Britons as well, namely, that it was American diplo- 
macy in East Asia that accomplished this union of 
Japan and Russia, the Times went afield, as natural 
under the circumstances, to attribute the affiliation to 
German diplomacy in Europe, in the words: "This 
new agreement is an illustration of how short-sighted 
German diplomacy has been. In the Far East as in 
the West it has brought together those whom it partic- 
ularly sought to set at enmity." 

Our place in international chancelleries of state was 
no longer worth consideration. What is fame ! 

Nations that form compacts, as well as carve fron- 
tiers for themselves out of China and other Pacific 
lands, need to make many explanations, lest they be 
misunderstood. The two countries of the world whose 
reposeful confidence and trust is worth while most 



328 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

profitably to-day, the two peoples whom it is most 
economic not to be misunderstood by, are the Republic 
of China and the Republic of the United States. 
They both have about the same kind of diplomatic 
establishments and plunderable wealth. The principal 
difference is that China's wealth is mostly raw wealth, 
that of the United States is largely twenty -four carats 
fine and garnered by the roadside. Japan is just be- 
tween these two ripe, juicy plum puddings, and as for 
her several too unctuous allied eulogists, her policy of 
making the utmost from their absence from East Asia 
shows that she trusts none of them. 

The Japanese Government, following the achieve- 
ment of this pact, was visibly elated by a great self- 
satisfaction and self-confidence. After the German 
drives that beat back the Russian armies in Europe, 
Russia was dependent upon Japan for re-armament. 
Then came a breakdown of her munition connections 
in the United States and the congestion and suspen- 
sion of traffic across America and the Pacific of muni- 
tions from the Atlantic states. Russia was more 
dependent upon Japan than ever. It was at this 
moment that the new pact was realized by Japan, and 
consequently the seven million dollars in munitions, 
reported as part of the Japanese amount against Rus- 
sia's credit, to cancel which Russia consented to the 
lopping off of her Manchurian railway and the admis- 
sion of Japan to the middle Sungari Valley and to 
northeastern Mongolia, only hinted at the extent to 
which Russia in East Asia was at the mercy of Japan. 

And both governments, sitting over the affairs of 
East Asia and the Pacific, "drank wine and talked 
tea, or drank tea and talked wine." While Minister 
of Foreign Affairs Sazonoff in Petrograd, July 7, talked 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 329 

of "the assurance that no power will take unfair ad- 
vantage of China to carry out its ambitions", Premier 
Count Okuma in Tokio further explained the com- 
pact as one in which Japan entered because she did 
"not want to take the full burden of Far Eastern 
peace alone" and was "afraid of being misunderstood 
by other powers, especially China." 

Aside "other powers", and a word about Premier 
Okuma's fear of China's misunderstanding Japan. 

The new Japanese-Russian pact was signed on July 3. 
On August 13, Japanese troops were at Chang-chia-tun, 
head of navigation on the Liao River, where the latter 
comes out of Mongolia into Manchuria, eighty miles 
north of the head of China's own railway at Hsin-min- 
tun (near the line of the proposed Kinchou-Aigun 
Railway, the concession for which was given to Ameri- 
can financiers), and blocking the Chinese highway to 
Petuna on the Sungari, where Japan now had a Rus- 
sia-Mongolia outpost by the secret terms of her new 
pact. And here these Japanese troops came into 
conflict with Chinese troops with a result of fifty 
Chinese and eighteen Japanese killed and wounded, 
all several hundred miles from the nearest Japanese 
frontier, Korea, and more than thirty miles from 
the Japanese-leased Manchurian railway. Thereupon 
Japan directed a military mobilization near the scene, 
and on September 3, just two months after the signa- 
ture of the new compact with Russia, the Chinese 
Foreign Office let it be known that Baron Gonsuke 
Hayashi, Japanese Minister in Peking, had presented 
to China certain Japanese demands and representa- 
tions, including : 

"First — Punishment of the officers in charge of the 
Chinese troops. 



330 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

"Second — The restriction of Chinese troops in their 
relations toward Japanese in South Manchuria and 
Inner Mongolia. 

" Third — Indemnification of the families of the 
Japanese killed. 

"Fourth — The granting to Japan of police rights 
in Inner Mongolia, and employment of Japanese police 
advisers in South Manchuria." 

Representations that were not given out enabled the 
Chinese Foreign Office to say that Chinese authority in 
Inner Mongolia would be eliminated if the secret and 
known demands were acceded to; that Japan de- 
manded : formal apology by the Chinese Governor 
at Mukden to the Japanese authorities there and at 
Dairen; the extension to Inner Mongolia of rights 
conceded to Japan in Manchuria in response to her 
ultimatum to China of May, 1915, including the recog- 
nition of "special interests" for Japan in Inner Mon- 
golia, the right to have military monitors with China's 
troops there, and in Manchuria, and in the Chinese mili- 
tary schools. In other words, Japan returned to her 
suspended demands of January-May, 1915, which in 
May, 1915, she warned China she would resume. 

The Chinese are unadvanced in many ways, but 
especially in those ways which spell parts of contem- 
porary Europe in the latter 's savagery. And by the 
standards of those who do the spelling, and of Japan 
which imitates them, she is immensely stupid. But 
Premier Okuma was not ignorant enough to believe 
that there was any chance whatever for the Chinese 
to misunderstand Japan. And Minister Sazonoff at 
Petrograd cannot be held to consider Russia as still 
taking her wine and her tea from the nursery bottle. 

Another thing. Okuma, while resting on his oars 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 331 

and eyeing the American correspondent, said: "We 
heartily welcome their [Americans'] commercial and 
industrial activity in China." So ! By Japan's leave. 
And after about one hundred years of free trade inter- 
course with and activity in China, before Japan had 
any civilized relations of any kind with China ! 

Okuma's words are the measure of Wilson's and 
Bryan's acts of March 18, 1913, and after. 

Okuma also said: "Japan welcomes any power's 
activity to maintain Far Eastern peace and commer- 
cial development." Which invitation he well knew 
the American Government would not accept, for he 
instantly followed it with this statement: "When the 
Allies [Manchurian and European] advised Yuan 
[China's ambitious president] to postpone the monarchy, 
Japan twice invited American participation. President 
Wilson indorsed the Allies' advice in principle, but 
refused participation, saying America did not want to 
interfere in Chinese internal affairs." Our methods 
of peace and commercial development were not 
Japan's. 

And he knew American capital would not accept, 
for President Wilson had again barred it out. Under 
the oppression which Japan was exerting against China, 
the latter, during the time the new pact was being 
negotiated and just before it was signed, was trying 
to get thirty million dollars in the United States. The 
President raised again the 1912 loan question, when 
the State Department advised the bankers of the former 
American group, which in 1908-1912 had made such a 
fight for the preservation of American trade and inter- 
course across the Pacific, and the independence of 
China, that it would look with favor upon their partic- 
ipation in a loan to China, provided such a loan were 



332 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

not made contingent upon concessions. As a matter 
of fact, China was again trying to get the bankers to 
pull her chestnuts out of the fire; the administration 
was trying to get the bankers to pull its and the China 
missionaries' and educators', and traders' and others' 
chestnuts out of the fire. The administration wanted 
the bankers to make the loan as a matter of patriotism, 
as the State Department intimated. The situation was 
apparent to everybody, unless to President Wilson 
and the State Department, as was pointed out by the 
bankers who, said they, in the first instance had been 
invited by the Government to participate in loans to 
China. President Wilson then had repudiated that 
invitation, and the first essential was the Government's 
revision of its act and the furnishing of some sort of 
governmental sanction, either a new or the old, some- 
thing that would make the bonds worth the public 
buying. Their security must be sound — specific 
Chinese revenues and resources, and aid of the Ameri- 
can Government in seeing that the conditions of the 
loan would be fulfilled. The administration's view 
was still purely academic, and it was impossible 
that Premier Okuma could have been unaware of the 
situation of the American group which, in 1912, had 
been forced by the threat of having President Wilson 
and his administration in power, to contract with its 
European associates for European protection for the 
interests it had already acquired in China, and to give 
up future opportunities until a new administration 
more reasonable could come into power in Washington. 
He knew that American financiers could not loan 
money to China. 

While Okuma was talking, Japan had very important 
issues at stake. And it was not beyond the scope of 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 333 

his sagacity to appreciate that the diversion of public 
attention would not do them any harm. Japan's com- 
plete possession of the assets reported just acquired 
from Russia in Manchuria depended upon China's 
consent to the deal. The two pact powers could not 
finally transfer any part of China's railways without 
her participation. Japan still had to deal with China. 
But Japan had no apprehensions. Okuma never hesi- 
tated. He knew China was helpless. He knew 
America would not come in, that our financiers and 
traders had once done so at great expense and been 
left to hold the bag, and that they had no mind to 
undertake, open-eyed and unsecured, the uncertainties 
of a contest with the Manchurian allies, of which Japan 
was indeed high cockalorum. Premier Okuma's invi- 
tation strongly resembled Japan's Fourth of July 
amenities. Had it come from Baron Shibusawa, it 
would have been expressed in the terms of an offer of 
Chinese bonds "made in Japan", and negotiable only 
through Japan. 

It is possible that the passing generation of Japanese, 
so distinguished for its great men, has furnished to the 
world some of its cleverest and greatest demagogues. 
But even Okuma appeared reluctant to face the conse- 
quences of his work in accomplishing the new pact with 
Russia which had been required of him. When the 
renewal of pressure upon China set in, as a result of 
Russia's reiteration of her part in the "predatory 
pact", Okuma resigned. Before whose coming? Be- 
fore the coming of ex-Minister of War General Count 
Terauchi, under whom Korea was annexed and military 
and police authority was extended in Manchuria. 
Motono, who in the first instance won Russia over 
and made possible the Japanese-Russian pact that 



334 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

eliminated the United States from the vital affairs 
of China, became Minister of Foreign Affairs. His 
life as a statesman and his diplomatic and world edu- 
cation had been acquired in Europe. He was the 
latest, most European and modern, and most dynamic 
Japanese diplomatic actor in the European-Asiatic 
coalition in the Pacific. Goto, who had aided him, 
and had built up Japan's communications, develop- 
ment, and administration on the continent, became 
Minister of the Interior. General Oshima, ex-Governor 
of Liaotung and Port Arthur, who had been Terauchi's 
lieutenant in extending military and political control 
in Manchuria, became Minister of War, while Ter- 
auchi's aide, General Hasagawa, succeeded his superior 
as Governor-General of Korea. Terauchi's opponents 
charged that his supporters were forming a war govern- 
ment to correct the " do-nothing policy" (sic) of Okuma, 
while Terauchi announced his program to be the 
"strengthening of the nation's resources." 

The importance of having a Pacific and foreign 
policy in the Western Hemisphere, and of having a 
government in the United States equal to its task in 
foreign affairs, was immediately illustrated by these 
events, in a dramatic way. When the Emperor of 
Japan designated Terauchi to form a Cabinet at 
Tokio, the owners of the Oceanic Steamship Company, 
our only remaining trans-Pacific steamer line, decided 
to sell out. Within a month liquidation and sale were 
authorized, and a price was fixed on the Company's 
assets which were already under consideration by 
foreign interests. Our situation in the Pacific, brought 
about by a course of evident ineptitude during the 
progress in East Asia of Japanese politics, militarism, 
and "strengthening of the nation's resources", was 



BLOWS FROM JAPAN 335 

that of virtually having sacrificed our last hold on our 
hard-won Pacific steam shipping — the greatest sinew 
of foreign commerce and the greatest auxiliary of 
defense. We had no remnant of trans-Pacific shipping 
service left. 



CHAPTER XIX 

Back to the Guns 

It was only a matter of time until Europe would 
call our weak diplomatic bluff in East Asia, and ter- 
minate our practice of taking an equal share of trade 
in China without doing a corresponding share of the 
work involved in its protection and extension. Fore- 
seeing this, as I have shown, the American Govern- 
ment from 1908 to 1912 took measures to set America 
upon a proper footing in all respects as a responsible 
power with the other nations involved, and one capable 
of discharging its duties abroad. The administration 
of Wilson had to purge itself and learn this all over 
again, but after four years, or in August, 1916, in effect 
it had to be told by the American financiers that the 
world was practical-minded and that foreign trade 
interests were dependent on sense and substance and 
not on theory and nonsense. Premier Okuma's sar- 
casms were lost upon it, and so were Japan's intensely 
practical depredations upon American rights, property, 
and other interests. 

But on the other hand it was hardly a question of 
time until Japan would make the most of our delin- 
quency, for her own advantage, and against ourselves 
and China, to say nothing of other nations. When she 
put her hand to the plough she brought about a show- 

336 



BACK TO THE GUNS 337 

down between the nations and civilizations of oppos- 
ing policies and principles in East Asia and the Pacific. 
That w r as the situation at the close of 1916. With its 
prospects at hand, is America going to continue chas- 
ing illusions in foreign affairs and forming grandiose 
plans in ignorance of essential facts, and be tamely 
turned under in the Pacific ? Is America going to sub- 
mit to Japan, Russia, and the outside world of distant 
Europe, which is now expressed in terms of a military 
and capitalistic Asiatic and Pacific confederation, led 
by Japan, to consent to their sitting in council upon 
the future of China and the Pacific area and have no 
place there or only such a one as is thrown to it ? Will 
America submit to Japan's aggrandizing leadership 
and her marshaling the world in shaping without 
American participation that which is the most vital 
to it of all possible issues? 

Slated with China to pay the war debts of Europe, 
either by present resources or future commerce, trade, 
industry, and finance, or all together, as China after 
the Portsmouth Treaty was slated to pay the war 
debts of Japan and Russia, is America to play the role 
of the tame scapegoat of the Pacific ? Is it going to 
remain kicked out of the council room of Asiatic and 
Pacific affairs, as well as out of Pacific trade and inter- 
course, and henceforth pay toll to a gatekeeper who 
has set himself up on its own and the world's ancient 
free highway to China ? With its principles and poli- 
cies in the Pacific a direct challenge to Japan, and with 
Europe behind Japan looming up across the Pacific, 
is it going to back down, and hunt its hiding place 
which never yet it has seen ? 

Is it going to be satisfied to see China's self-wrought 
future now rising in her hopes, snatched from her by a 



338 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

neighbor, because that neighbor was first to find the 
iron-clad and the machine gun, and was the one, in 
the household of China's own civilization and orbit, 
to rush ruthlessly upon her ? Is it desirous of continu- 
ing to deserve the confidence and emulation of Pacific 
nations, as Japan once thought it deserved, and China 
still so thinks? Does it cherish the honor of being 
"the only power able to look China in the face with- 
out the blush of shame" ? Or is it preparing through 
default, or mistaken policy, or criminal political cussed- 
ness, to abandon its historical and political international 
position in China, East Asia, and the Pacific? Is it 
letting slip the great appointment, turning away its 
head, while the spirit of John Hay is "but a little way" 
above it, declaring with Okuma that China is unfit 
and unworthy, that she does not deserve the considera- 
tion framed by America in the treaties, and that 
America can no longer and to its lasting good defend 
those treaties and the principles on which they were 
made and remade? Is it then going to capitulate to 
international plunder, like Russia, and divide China's 
patrimony with Japan and the predatory pack, in- 
directly, by sanctioning and financing Japan's aggres- 
sions ? 

Will America, from administration to administra- 
tion, tolerate the policy of drift exemplified in Root's 
and Wilson's management of State Department affairs 
during the vital formative period of the great Pacific 
problem? Will it continue to permit its political 
parties to play battledore and shuttlecock with its 
greatest office, the State Department, and with foreign 
affairs, as its politicians in Congress and out do in 
words, with foreign peoples and systems? Will it be 
satisfied to see itself pushed staggering, like a drunken 



BACK TO THE GUNS 339 

man, along precipices which nations have raised above 
their worst debaucheries? Is it going to continue 
lost, diplomatically and internationally, tracking its 
way aimlessly and fruitlessly through the wide wastes 
between Occidental and Oriental diplomacy, finance, 
and economics, for an avenue of escape from world 
responsibilities, as was Russia? Has it been made 
the present Siberian convict by Japan, in the place of 
Russia? Is it the big, docile, half -starved, outdoor 
animal that Russia was before her war with Japan and 
the World War? 

So far as practically accessible wealth goes, America, 
with China, is the real and potential treasury of the 
world, and the only source of pay to the war-starved 
Entente or Manchurian allies, as well as to the central 
powers. It decamped in East Asia at the first turn 
of the predatory pack, frightened at the lingering 
blood-marks in Manchuria and the Pacific, and the 
coalition of the Manchurian allies under Japan — no 
doubt of that. The voyage of discovery of its State 
Department, begun 1908-1909, led it to Japan and 
her program for the remaking of East Asia and the 
Pacific. What protection has it against the execution 
by Japan of her program through a long world war 
alone, or its after effects? With the British colonies 
in the Pacific handcuffed or crippled, and with Latin- 
America unadvanced and undefended, how is it to 
withstand alone the insatiable hunger and political 
ambition of Japan, and of Japan backed by Europe? 
What anchor has it to windward, among Japan's allies, 
or others, that can help it to forestall a final Japanese 
victory in the shape of political and then trade and 
cultural elimination first of itself and then of other 
Western powers from East Asia, and the expansion of 



340 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Asiatics eastward across the Pacific, as West Asians 
expanded westward around the world, but suddenly, 
in a thousandth of the time, with modern dispatch? 
How can it prevent the hungry nations of Europe in- 
ordinately helping themselves under Japan's aegis 
at China's and America's expense, before Japan com- 
mands China, not to say the Pacific, for herself? 
Europe and Japan know America's weak spot — the 
Pacific ; when and how will they again strike America 
there? When is it fully to answer to the turn of 
Japan which took place in Tokio when Komura arrived 
back from Portsmouth in 1905, and there came the 
parting of the ways? Is America ready for the limi- 
tation of its institutions, its influence, and its destiny ? 
Has the time come for the Great Republic to turn 
back in its westward march, scared from its frontiers, 
laughed out of the Pacific? 

When the determination of the immediate question 
of the future of Europe comes to conference, the fate 
of America's interests and the future of the United 
States in the Pacific will be determined by Japan and 
the winners in the World War. Courland, Flanders, 
the Dardanelles, Serbia, Bukowina, Verdun, Mesopo- 
tamia, the North Sea, and what happened after, cast 
their spell over the central powers in Europe, and the 
Manchurian allies of the Pacific area. But they all 
will come back to East Asia with their attention un- 
divided, and there will be enough of them with Japan 
to annul American influence in the Pacific, and be 
upon the American back in all its questions. 

At the close of the World War, Japan will be the 
second most substantially benefited power in the world. 
She will have profited, next to the United States, by 
the monopoly of commerce with China and by the 



BACK TO THE GUNS 341 

war trade, and next to none in the fruits of aggression, 
while the demonstrated success of Prussian efficiency, 
regardless of the final outcome in Europe, will have 
given a new and greater popular and imperial justifica- 
tion and defense to Japanese imperialistic statesman- 
ship, policies, and plans. It is clear that the only 
hope for American honor, international justice, protec- 
tion of commerce and trade, and other American in- 
terests in East Asia in future will be either the triumph 
of an European-American treaty coalition over Japanese- 
European Prussianism, or a triumph of the military 
forces of the United States over those of Japan, and a 
mastery in Washington in the management of foreign 
affairs. 

In 1912, when Wilson kept the United States out of 
the way of the "steam-roller" of the Manchurian 
allies, as it galloped around the earth, he also cut essen- 
tial national foundations away. Had we stayed in the 
Six-Power Loan, we would have had a most powerful 
basis for "mediation" in the anticipated peace confer- 
ence that is to settle in the Pacific our most important 
affairs. W T ere we active, physical participants in the 
physical and real affairs of the world, especially in the 
Pacific, about which Okuma justly taunts us, its affairs 
would not be in danger of being settled unknown to us, 
as were those of China's sovereignty and the Open 
Door in Manchuria. We would be in no danger of hav- 
ing the lines of our future taken from our control, and 
our fate in the Pacific laid down in secret agreements, 
supplementary clauses, ententes, and what not, be- 
tween the upper and the nether millstones of which 
we would be ground during fretful years of ignorant 
cross-purposes and blind struggles in foreign affairs. 
Unless the United States can manage to retain what 



342 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

equality of right it has in China and increase its eco- 
nomic foundations there by loans, diplomacy, and the 
moral support that comes of adequate naval and other 
military forces, so as to be prepared to render aid to 
restore the balance in favor of the capitalistic powers, 
she will have to go to war with Japan to break that 
country's designs and present works. 

Our responsibility in the Pacific area is something 
we have been shunning, scuttling ; increasing the bur- 
den of our final and inevitable task. For unless we 
destroy our history in the Pacific area, the retrench- 
ment we have made must have its resultant flux. The 
question whether we must tolerate a Prussianization 
of East Asia and the Pacific is fairly clear. The Mon- 
roe Doctrine applies to the destiny of the Pacific half 
of the Western Hemisphere, whose interests are bound 
up in the future of the Pacific area. And the world's 
connections across the Pacific, with Western civiliza- 
tion's communications westward with Asia, have their 
tie in the historic rights and treaties throughout East 
Asia by which we are bound. There is no way to 
break that tie unless we Prussianize, or Japanize. 
American relations and enterprise in East Asia have 
confuted all evil prophets, as I have shown. What has 
been done by the United States in the interest of human 
rights in the Pacific area, though not defined thus in 
words, was a sincere and great moral effort toward the 
end of safeguarding mankind in the Pacific area from 
evils such as have afflicted mankind in the Atlantic 
area. And events in the Atlantic area have eminently 
justified those prophetic fears of our forefathers, 
together with the promising effort hitherto made by 
our statesmen, teachers, financiers, and traders. We 
are in no respect called upon to deny sovereignty and 



BACK TO THE GUNS 343 

independence to any treaty power in the Pacific, let 
alone the master civilization of China. China is only 
another name for treaties and rights such as are the 
words Belgium, and Serbia, and Montenegro. 

It is obvious that our only line of escape from worse 
sacrifices, humiliations, and dishonors, is to rout Japan 
from the position of her monstrous assumptions as the 
monitor of China and the nations in East Asia. If, 
after ignoring the loss of our rights in China, the present 
American policy of drifting should continue, Japan's 
great reason for war against us (these essentials of inter- 
national relations are formulated long in advance) 
would not be China. It would be that of the imposition 
of Japanese and Asiatic colonization upon the shores of 
the Pacific generally. Emigration, being the basis of 
modern ocean commerce and of the great merchant 
marine fleets and navies of Europe, is the basis of 
future commerce and sea power on the Pacific Ocean. 
No great steamship development on the Pacific com- 
parable to that in the Atlantic is attainable between 
Japan and the countries of the Pacific, for Japan, 
without Japanese emigration. And an armed victory 
over the United States, if obtained without too great a 
sacrifice, would give to Japan such a prestige in the 
Pacific that few countries would be able to resist her 
demands for immigrant admission, whatever we our- 
selves might do. 

But to America, the Asiatic immigration issue in the 
United States is not the Pacific war issue. That is a 
question which both sides, in fact, recognize cannot be 
settled by war, at least in respect to the United States. 
California cannot settle the Pacific question or have 
any appreciable effect upon it. Scuttling and the 
assertion of a sacrifice of our principles respecting 



344 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

treaties, rights, and possessions, and of our ships, for 
the trade across the Pacific with Japan, will not settle 
it. Whether the United States keeps out of East Asia 
or not, Japan and the United States will not get along. 
The only way for the United States to get along is to 
face Japan as forcibly, if not as defiantly, as Japan 
faces them, ever present in all the Pacific area's im- 
portant affairs, and ever alert. The United States 
cannot keep on writing treaties in the Pacific and see- 
ing them broken. They would be a coolie power. 
Their own safety, as well as honor and other interests, 
depend upon the reestablishment of respect for treaties 
in East Asia, and the inviolability of long-established 
and prior rights. The great question between Japan 
and the United States is not the Japanese- American 
treaty ; it is that of half a hundred treaties and agree- 
ments in China and East Asia. 

After our experience in the making of the Pacific, 
there is one outstanding important finding : We are 
not understood by the Japanese as we understand our- 
selves, and there is no possibility of an amicable 
understanding through the methods employed in the 
past. We overestimated our influence and the im- 
portance of our civilization and institutions in the 
opening of Japan, just as we overplayed our role with 
her in China. Most of our acts in the Pacific as well 
as East Asia are challenged by Japan, who has more 
than surpassed us in the use of force, which she has 
used for aggression, has exceeded all powers, wherever 
she has come into conflict with any people, and has 
assumed the position of arbiter. 

Perhaps none have done so much toward combating 
prejudice and blame which has been accumulating in 
the world against Japan as have Americans. Criticism 



BACK TO THE GUNS 345 

from them, therefore, is not premature when it is said 
that on the other hand the Japanese, both the people 
and the rulers, have been misled by the free and un- 
qualified appreciation that accompanied Japan's first 
impression made upon America about 1876 — a whole- 
heartedness probably largely the reaction from a cen- 
tury of prejudice against and distrust of Europe. The 
American people always have held China in esteem, 
and as time multiplied her distractions, in sympathy. 
These it also turned to Japan, one of its nearest western 
neighbors. But Japan is now faced with what is per- 
fectly plain to her, the equivalent reaction, for which 
she is sagaciously prepared. It is everywhere known 
that the Japanese people have been educated to believe 
in imminent war with the United States. It has been 
explained by Japan's American apologists that troops 
embarked from the Inland Sea in 1914 to take Ger- 
many's Shantung colony, Kiaochou, understood they 
were embarking against the United States. 

Japan has comprehended the West only too well, 
in most of its ways. Her political second sight and 
her prophetic vision are more acute than ours. But 
there is one thing in connection with her relations with 
America she did not get hold of, she did not grasp 
— the handle of Anglo-Saxon right and wrong, a sense 
that is the chief heritage of the great mass of the peo- 
ple inhabiting the American continent. But she has 
deliberately determined that equation to be negligible, 
as is shown by the policy of empire upon which she has 
embarked since Komura's return from Portsmouth ; 
and the fact that this is the greatest single piece of 
evidence of the conflict to be waged across the Pacific, 
has given the world for ten years the engrossing specu- 
lation whether Japan is "going to get away with it." 



346 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

Japan is Jesuitical, leveling everything to attain 
progress toward her far-flung ultimate end. The world 
is pretty well assured now that the moral sense of 
Japan is totally different from that of the Anglo-Saxon 
countries, or that it is still a fluid and indefinite body. 
That accounts for Japan out-distancing us in the 
political game in the Pacific, to be sparing of our 
vanity. It took arms to do it, and arms is what it 
takes to oppose it. Japan's policies are such, both 
political, — in her foreign relations and domestic, — 
in her ethical teachings and education of her people to 
their peculiar blind patriotic duties to the sovereign, 
that we could not but be obliged to inculcate among 
coming and present Americans the principle of war 
with Japan. 

Lest I do an injustice to the people of Japan, I take 
occasion to make clear those of whom I speak. There 
is little less conspiracy in determining the national 
affairs in Japan than there was only a few decades 
ago, when royalty was a shell game in which one now 
saw the "emperor", and now he didn't. Imperial 
power still is a superstition, and the people generally 
are not in a position to know, and certainly seldom 
understand. Their only connection with it is as 
economic and military units and as estimable human 
beings, faultless in their hospitality and manners 
toward strangers. I speak of Nippon and the Japanese 
who conduct her international affairs or contribute 
to the conduct of them. Japan has changed our rela- 
tion to her, and we are obliged to act correspondingly. 
Under the expansion and aggrandizing policy of her 
empire builders, Japan is a world ogre, as shown 
throughout every civilized land east and west. She 
is the last country on the globe, save perhaps Prussia, 



BACK TO THE GUNS 347 

to seek empire by the subjugation of not only other, 
but great civilized States, and the exploitation of their 
resources for her individual benefit to the detriment 
and exclusion of others who are her predecessors, or 
associates, and even allies. The efforts of her leaders 
to deny these facts are a laughing stock in the world's 
press, and she is not only distrusted in all the great 
state chancelleries of the world but, in the State 
Department at Washington, which has made a four 
years' struggle under a great visionary impulse and 
illusion to see Japan's side, confidence in 1916 was 
more than extinct. America needed a great modern 
Townsend Harris to deal with Japan. 

After the time of Komura's arrival in Tokio from 
Portsmouth, in fact from the time of Ito's death, there 
began that hostility between Japan and the United 
States which leads to conflict. Those events quickly 
introduced the great conflict as prophesied, and the 
full complications for us, of Japan and Europe in the 
Pacific. Since then four important things have existed. 
The people generally, from the lowest to the highest, 
of both nations, have been mentally prepared for war. 
The peoples of neither country have been mentally, 
or intellectually, prepared for any ultimate solution 
otherwise of their problem. Militarily, Japan is 
splendidly prepared for a solution by war at any time, 
and — The United States are unprepared in every 
direction, except apprehensively, for a solution by war. 

With Ito's death, that demise of friendship between 
Japanese and Americans set in which such efforts have 
been made, by peace advocates and exchange profes- 
sors, and other devices, to stay. If there is any event 
from which the final break with Japan may be dated, 
it might be that when Secretary Bryan said to Am- 



348 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

bassador Chinda : "There is no last word between 
friends." It was the sign that we had nothing more 
in us for Japan but talk, and she could begin with the 
whip, at her leisure. That might be said to have cut 
the Gordian knot that bound the two civilizations 
across the Pacific in friendship by the tie of humanity. 
Japan changed her ambassadors at Washington, made 
her new pact with Russia, and her renewed demands 
upon China. We were confronted in the Pacific with 
the "white man's burden" — the burden of our de- 
mocracy, our treaties, and of the Asiatic taskmaster, 
until we could show Japan that she wielded the whip 
at her peril. 

All evidences show that the new Japanese-Russian 
pact is the same old political conspiracy of Japan, but 
with the added complication of Russian divided in- 
terests due to the World War, and that after the World 
War which gave the pact its raison d'etre is over, some 
great issue like the close control and exploitation of 
China and the Pacific with the extinction of all Ameri- 
can political, and if possible, cultural influence, the 
appropriation of China's natural resources for exhaus- 
tive exploitation, and monopolizing of China's indus- 
trial development, close control of finance and govern- 
ment in China, and levying upon American intercourse 
and trade in the Pacific, with the pressure of Asiatic 
emigration turned to the Western Hemisphere, must 
exist to maintain it. Otherwise it will dissolve. And 
that is what Japan is preparing against. She is obliged 
to retain the leadership. If she does not, she will lose 
what she has sprung upon since August 1, 1914. Her 
hopes in this are partly justified by the declarations of 
her allies. Russia, in the words of Sazonoff, when the 
pact was a fait accompli, relied upon her "solidarity 



BACK TO THE GUNS 349 

with Japan." Her interests were in Japan's hands — 
she need not worry. Also: "As interpreted in Great 
Britain and France," said the Osaka Asahi, "the new 
compact was devised by Russia and Japan to protect 
their immense interests in China." And threw this 
sop to their allies, namely: "It is a strong reply to 
repeated German overtures for separate peace." 

The future of the Manchurian alliance of Europe 
and Asia, on the continent of Asia and in the Pacific, 
as mirrored in the latest pact to which the Asahi re- 
ferred, was further expressed by the London Daily 
Chronicle: "Germany will see in the latest alliance a 
fresh obstacle in the way of her return to the Far 
East." We were shut out before Japan — backed by 
Great Britain, Russia, and France — excluded Germany. 
Alliances are transitory, but they last long enough to 
attain the objects that compel them in the beginning, 
and long enough is too long for the interests which they 
overcome. 

The predatory alliance cemented by the Japanese- 
Russian pacts then, when the World War motives 
governing the European allies in it are gone, will be 
the pact of unshackled and no longer distracted Europe, 
and of Japanese Asia, in the Pacific, upon our right 
flank. With its written determination, fixed as it will 
be, solely upon these enterprises by which to recoup 
after the World War, the life and efficiency of that 
confederation, now measured in the world by the gains 
reclaimed from other packs, will be measured in the 
Pacific by gains expressed from others' rights and pos- 
sessions — the potentially and actually rich, and 
defensively helpless Chinese and Americans. 

Having been shown in the Atlantic and the Pacific, 
in the Antarctic and in the Indian oceans, and in all 



350 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

the great continents, that war still exists in the world, 
Americans essentially must think upon war in the 
Pacific. When they consider the understanding on 
these great and vital issues to be desired with a great 
alien civilization whose guise Japan presumes to wear, 
and that in her they face purposes and determinations 
opposing their own, it is clear that the force which 
Russia looked for from us in her struggle against Japan 
after the Russian-Japanese War, and that which also 
England and others have looked for in vain, we are 
now impelled to manifest. 

Many have guessed at the future in the Pacific 
when begins the conflict of Japan and the United States 
over the rights and principles of international right and 
free international intercourse. Japan's summons to us 
to get out of East Asia had at last an answer in Con- 
gress from armament legislation, when the national 
spokesman, Mr. Sherley, when introducing the Forti- 
fications Bill in June, 1916, said that the people of 
the United States "are demanding that Congress shall 
see to it that this country is put in a position properly 
to maintain its rights no matter where, when, or by 
whom they may be assailed." International law was a 
shred. There was little left to us abroad anywhere, 
except our poorly equipped and stocked outlying for- 
tifications. We reached an appreciation of that fact 
in the increase then made in our Pacific armament. 
The vast area of the Pacific had attained a strategic 
importance greater than at any time in the world's 
history, armed for some great struggle. Gibraltar had 
been imitated during the years, in Hongkong, at Shi- 
monoseki, Port Arthur, Vladivostok, and half a dozen 
other places. For us Corregidor, Olongapo and Manila 
Bay, Pearl Harbor and Diamond Head, had been 



BACK TO THE GUNS 351 

created, but otherwise we were back to the guns in our 
hands. There was little else. The fighting ground 
of the Pacific for the United States had shifted from 
China to their insular possessions and to California, 
and Americans were confronted with the immediate 
necessity of making a last stand in the open ocean. 

With the World War, the alien races and civiliza- 
tions in the Pacific were finally at each other ; Japan, 
the chief determining factor, was the leader of the pred- 
atory pack, and had shown her aspirations to attain 
to the understanding that comes of needy strife and 
struggle. She had no misgivings and no fear of the 
sword. She had demonstrated its efficiency in inter- 
nal and external disputations and conflicts. 

Mutual understanding in East Asia in the past, in 
all important matters, has been arrived at only by war. 
This has been true of China and the powers, of Russia 
and Japan, and of Japan and Korea. Will it be true 
of Japan and China, Japan and Germany, Japan and 
the United States, and Japan and the world, are ques- 
tions left only to war to answer, for war has already 
undertaken them. 

A conclusion respecting this great subject of the 
Pacific is automatically shaped by self-evident cir- 
cumstances set forth in the preceding pages. The 
essential facts which I have attempted to show with 
approximate completeness make clear that Japan, in 
addition to meeting the West in many points fairly, 
has used conspiracy, intimidation, and force to take 
from the nations generally extensive rights in East 
Asia. She has first broken and then destroyed finally the 
original concert of the Open Door for the maintenance 
of China's territorial and administrative integrity and 
sovereignty which America had laboriously built up. 



352 THE MENACE OF JAPAN 

She has threatened the foundations of all foreign rela- 
tions in East Asia established by treaties covering 
more than seventy years, in order to step between the 
powers and other East Asian nations, and by forcible 
dictation control all foreign trade, material resources, 
and political and commercial intercourse. She has 
set up a position in violent moral conflict with the 
principles of peace and humanity that are the basis 
of the treaties, which strikes at America's commercial 
and cultural mission of one hundred and thirty years 
in East Asia, the spirit of its people, and of Western 
civilization. For her own purposes she sets adrift in 
the international ocean the vast Chinese branch of the 
human race, whose welfare and destiny are bound up 
with our own and that of all nations and peoples in 
the Pacific area, and is bringing on a conflict of the 
two civilizations. 

The United States, by the World War, were more 
intimately faced with the problem of the Pacific, 
namely, whether or not they were to become a coolie 
power, perhaps outranking China and Korea, but not 
outranking Portugal or Mexico in foreign influence in 
East Asia. The terrific moral conflict existing in the 
two viewpoints, the impossibility of a solution on the 
basis of accepting the view demanded by Japan, which 
is that constructed by Komura on the lines of confisca- 
tion of Korean, Chinese, and foreign rights in East 
Asia, the Japanese Government's haste to expand and 
conquer at the expense of other nations, and its insensi- 
bility to international right and morality, together with 
its implied and expressed summons to us to get out of 
East Asia, seemed to need nothing more by way of defi- 
nition of open warfare which those calling themselves 
by the name of men are obliged to answer with war. 



BACK TO THE GUNS 353 

Japan has made herself ready, and would probably 
accept that challenge. If we were determined not to 
be driven like dumb coolies to the fate of the Pacific, 
to dispute with every means in our power the expulsion 
from treaty countries in East Asia, by Japan and her 
predatory pack, of Western influences, and their regu- 
lation through Tojdo, as I have pointed out, and would 
back up our determination with all our reserve force, 
a possibility for reckoning up the score in the Pacific 
by the light of understanding and mutual respect that 
comes from war would be presented that Japan would 
respect, if she did not welcome. And in this practical 
and logical means to an essential end, the Asiatic prob- 
lem, if we were successful, would be settled for a long 
time. 

The sword, which Providence and Wisdom commend 
to China, they also commend to America. 



INDEX 



Aigun, 104 

Alameda, The, 258, 259 

Alaska, 251, 253; sale to America, 
27, 32 

Alexander, 280 

Alexeieff, Admiral, 29 

Amano, Professor, 38 

America, see United States 

America, The, 252, 253, 261 

American neutralization proposal, 
103, 112-121, 128, 130-131, 143, 
164, 170, 174-175, 179, 180-184, 
186, 200, 207, 240, 241, 289 

American-Russian Company on 
Siberian coast, 148 

American Steam Navigation Com- 
pany, 255, 257 

Amoy, 261 

Amur Railway, 151, 152, 153, 162 

Amur River, 52, 105, 147, 151, 160, 
178 

Anglo-Japanese alliance, 94, 146, 
149, 183, 189, 203, 325 

Aoki, Viscount (Japanese Ambassa- 
dor), 53; quoted, 114, 230; 
recalled, 174 

Archimandrite Mission (Peking), 
173 

Ariel, The, 254 

Article VI (Russian-Chinese con- 
tract, 1896), 48, 154-155, 157, 
158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 169, 176, 
177, 178, 185, 208, 241; pro- 
visions of, 176 ; quoted, 48 

Asahi Shimbun, The (Osaka), 273; 
quoted, 270-272, 349 

Asia, 7, 8, 9, 18, 27, 136, 227, 237, 265 

Asiatic question, 53, 54, 73, 148 

Aspinwall, William IL, 251, 264 



Associated Press, at Peking, 204; 

at Portsmouth, 29, 30-35, 37; 

in London, 19; in Tokio, 204 
Atlantic, The, 4, 5, 6, 20, 57, 197, 

203, 265, 310; conditions in, 318, 

319, 320, 342, 343 
Australia, The, 257 
Austria, 14, 208, 318; army in 

Chihli, 10, 13 
A. H. Badger, The, 256 

Bailloud, General, 11, 12 

Balclutha, The, 255 

Balkans, The, 90 

Baltic, The, 226, 234 

Baring Brothers, London, 25-26 

Barrier Forts, 285 

Belgium, 80, 177, 228, 318 

Belloc, Hilaire, 19 

Bering Strait, 147 

Berlin, 18, 71, 78, 79, 119, 181 

Bethmann-Hollweg, Doctor Von 
(German Chancellor), 66 

Bismarck, 145 

Bland, J. O. P., 119 

Board of Revenue Bank (China), 
124; collapse of, 127 

Bonin Islands, 275, 277 

Boston Steamship Company, 259 

Bourse Gazette, The (St. Petersburg), 
323 

Boxer indemnity, 112, 223; remis- 
sion of, 82, 95, 97, 124, 142; ex- 
penditure of, 95-96 

Boxer Uprising, 22, 123, 223, 295; 
in South Chihli, 10 

Brinkley, Captain, 38; quoted, 177 

British Australasian colonies, 53, 54, 
339 



355 



356 



INDEX 



British-Russian, Scott-Muravieff 

agreement, Note, 89 
Bryan, William J. ,197, 310, 311, 331, 

347; quoted, 194; resigned, 5 
Bryn Mawr College, 308 
Bukowina, 340 
Bulgar army, 13 
Burlingame, Anson (American 

Minister to China), 143, 253 
Burlingame Treaty, 222 
Burma, 276 
Bussche-Haddenhausen, Baron von 

dem, 31-35 

Calhoun, John C , 194 

Calhoun, William J. (successor to 
Minister Rockhill), 130, 136, 137 

California, 27, 251, 262, 317, 343; 
future fighting ground, 351 ; 
Japanese school question in, 49, 
50, 53, 98 

California, The, 251 

Campbell, Mr. (agent Pacific Mail 
Steamship Company), 267 

Canton, 40, 134, 221, 295 

Canton Period ( 1844), 22, 23, 

267 

Cape of Good Hope, 263 

Capitalistic allies (Great Britain, 
France, Germany, United States), 
in currency loan, 129, 131, 132, 
136, 138, 139, 140-141, 142; 
Japan and Russia admitted to 
alliance, 190 ; joint advisership 
in China, 134; neutral adviser- 
ship in China, 142 

Carpathians, The, 234 

Casenave, M. (Minister Plenipo- 
tentiary of France), 67 

Celestial Empire, The, 252 

Central China, included under China 

Chamberlain, Senator, quoted, 8 

Chang Chih-tung (Viceroy at 
Wuchang), 62, 68, 76, 78, 83, 85, 
172, 329; quoted, 76 

Chang Yin-Tang (Chinese Minister 
at Washington), 129 

Charlemagne, 280 

Chemulpo, 238 



Chen Chin-Tao, 129 

Chiang-chun (at Kuanchengtzu), 
45, 167, 176 

Chicago, Illinois, 29 

Chicago Daily News, The, 204 

Chicago Herald, The, 204 

Chientao region, 56 

Chihli, 9, 149; cleared of Chinese 
troops, 10, 11; divided, 10; 
Japanese expansion into, 231 ; 
punitive expeditions in, 11-13 

Chihli, Gulf of, 14, 20, 52, 54, 104 

China, 25, 54, 64, 148, 167, 170, 259, 
278, 280, 291, 317, 321, 323, 327, 
343, 351, 352, 353; agreement 
with Germany, 65; appeal to 
England, 52; appeal to powers, 
169 ; Article VI, 48, 154-155, 157, 
158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 169, 176, 
177, 178, 185 ; attempt to devise 
a budget, 126 ; Board of Revenue 
Bank, 124, 127; brought into 
diplomatic relation with world, 
146 ; case against, 292-301 ; Cen- 
tral China, 57, 88; Ching- 
Komura convention (Peking), 91- 
92, 176, 224; controversy over 
Hsin-min-tun Railway, 91-94, 
103, 106, 109; crisis in finance, 
61-62, 64; crucial year, 216-217; 
currency loan controversy, 130- 
143, 187; currency reform, 122- 
125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 140, 141 ; 
debt to Europe, 123, 125 ; descrip- 
tion of (Doctor Martin's), 292; 
development of, 195 ; difficult 
bargainer, 107-108; disillusioned, 
103 ; effort to build Manchurian 
railways, 91-121, 128; Emperor 
of, 102; Empress-Dowager, 102, 
124, 127; European compact 
with, 67; extraterritoriality in, 
196, 215, 221, 222, 223, 224; 
fate of, 237 ; . fight with money 
powers of Europe, 124 ; financial 
situation, 122-143; "financial 
spheres", 125; Forbidden City, 
The, 85, 128 ; foreign financial ad- 
viser, 126, 130-140, 142; 



INDEX 



357 



China — (continued) 

Foreign Office, 329, 330 ; foreign 
policy, 91, 94, 95, 98-102, 112, 
116, 121 ; foreign intervention 
in finances, 129, 130-143, 197; 
foreign trade, 243-249; Great 
Wall, 9, 10, 11, 106, 197, 209; 
Hankow-Szechuan Railway, 65- 
66, 68; helplessness of, 333; 
Hukuang loan affair, 66-86; his- 
tory of money in, 141 ; increase of 
custom rates, 126; loans to, 59, 
60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 71, 104, 
105, 106, 108, 124, 129-141, 190, 
199, 248, 331-332; monarchical 
system in, 188 ; moral welfare of, 
194-195 ; most ambitious enter- 
prise, 108-109; "National Debt 
Association", 125 ; National As- 
sembly, 139, 140; needs of, 88, 
197, 199; North China, 13, 173; 
offer to purchase Manchurian 
railways, 112, 160; opens Man- 
churian rivers, 160; omnibus 
protocol, 223; politics of, 295, 
297-298; present and future 
position of, 309, 337-353; "Pres- 
ervation of Peace Society", 302; 
problems of, 91, 93, 195; protest 
to, 164 ; railway concessions, 59, 
60; recent government, 301-306, 
307; 

Relations with Japan : agree- 
ments with, 48, 91, 92; alarmed 
by, 49; controlled by 208, 232, 
237; boycotts Japan, 216; con- 
flict with Japanese troops, 329; 
demands of Japan, 204, 209-210, 
211-215, 218, 219, 226, 227, 228, 
232, 233, 234, 235, 236; division 
planned by Japan, 232-233 ; post- 
bellum relations, 91, 301; sover- 
eignty destroyed, 341, 351 ; inter- 
ference of Japan, 311, 312, 336; 

Relations with United 
States, 4, 7, 22, 55, 58, 60, 62, 
64, 65, 67, 68, 86, 98, 128, 194- 
195, 196, 198, 221-225, 242-249, 
270, 273, 274, 275, 276, 310-311, 



China — (continued) 

318. 319, 325, 333, 336; Ameri- 
can capital in, 325, 331 ; agree- 
ment with Mr. Straight, 52; 
appeal for money, 52, 82, 94, 95, 
124, 129-130, 135, 331 ; attitude 
towards American Steamship 
Company, 260-261 ; Boxer indem- 
nity, 95-96, 223; first embassy 
to America, 253; Ito-Harriman 
agreement, see Ito-Harriman 
agreement ; missionary commis- 
sions to America, 197; mission- 
aries in China, 196, 311; loans 
to China, 61, 65, 66-70, 79, 130- 
143, 147, 187-189, 199, 331, 332; 
only friend to America, 7, 55 ; 
physical footing in China, 145, 
163, 223, 275, 326, 342 ; right-of- 
aid agreement, 61, 67, 68, 69, 71 ; 
Religion of, 293-295 ; republic in, 
191, 303, 304, 305, 306; revolu- 
tion in, 187-189, 190-191, 216; 
revolutionary and reform agita- 
tors, 139, 140; right-of-aid agree- 
ments, 61, 65, 67, 68, 69, 71, 81 ; 
Siege of the Legations, 9, 67; 
secret agreement with Russia, 43, 
78, 154, 176; special rights in, 
151, 185, 198, 241, 313; spheres 
of influence in, 58, 59, 145 ; stamp 
tax, 124, 126-127, 133; struggles 
of, 159, 216, 217; throne, 11, 12, 
117, 216; treaties, 90, 196-197, 
198, 221-222, 223-224, 291, 344; 
visitors to, 173, 175; wealth, 6, 
328, 339 ; World War issue, 6 

China, The, 253, 266 

China-Japan War, 297 

China Sea, 1 

Chinda (Japanese Ambassador to 
America), 311, 348 

Chinese proverb, 76 

Chinese Railway (present), 10 

Ching, Prince, 91 

Ching-Komura Convention (Pe- 
king), 91-92, 176, 224 

Chun, Prince (Regent of China), 78, 
84, 85, 88, 125, 128. 129 



358 



INDEX 



City of Melbourne, The, 255, 257 
City of New York, The, 257 
City of San Francisco, The, 257 
City of Sydney, The, 257 
Civil War (America), 201, 267 
Clay, Henry, 202 
Cleveland, President, 239 
Colima, The, 257 
Collins, Perry McD., 147 
Colorado, The, 252 
Colorado River, 265 
Columbia, The, 252 
Columbia River, 252, 261 
Columbia University, New York, 92 
Constantinople, 63, 73 
Cordes, Herr (Peking), 62, 67 
Corning, Captain, 254 
Corregidor, 350 
Costa Rica, The, 252 
Courland, 340 

Cramp's shipbuilding yards, Phila- 
delphia, 258 
Creasy, Sir Edward S., prophecy of, 

144, 146, 147 
Cromer, Lord, 190 
Culebra, 3 
Currency loan agreement, 147, 187, 

190, 199, 248, 249, 270, 273; 

application of, 136, 139, 141, 143; 

becomes Six-Power Loan, 191 ; 

history of, 129-143; Japan and 

Russia admitted, 190 
Cyphrenes, The, 257 
Czar, The, 173 

Dacotah, The, 255, 256 

Dairen, 330 

Dakota, The, 259 

Dalny (Tairen), 44 

Dardanelles, The, 340 

Dennison, Willliam Henry (Ameri- 
can adviser to Japan), 207, 217, 
230; at Portsmouth, 29; works 
in Japan, 205, 210 

De Plancon, Mons., 29 

Dernburg, Doctor, 174 

Diamond Head, 350 

Dickinson, J. M. (ex-Secretary of 
War), 175 



Dillon, Doctor E. J. (Morning 
Telegraph), 29 

District of Columbia, See Washing- 
ton 

Dollar, Robert, 259 

Dollar Company, 266 

Dukla Pass, 226, 235, 236 

Dunkirk, 226 

Dutch Indies, 244 



East Asia, 5, 8, 20, 21, 68, 89, 105, 
275, 280, 281, 282, 284, 285, 286, 
289, 291, 298, 301, 312, 313, 314, 
315, 321, 328 ; advancement of, 24 ; 
America in, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 40, 
54, 55, 58, 64, 66, 73, 77, 89, 91, 
112, 121, 132, 168, 186, 187, 193, 
195, 197, 220, 225, 226, 229, 237, 
248, 266, 270, 272, 274, 281, 282, 
285, 286, 313, 317, 319, 337-341 ; 
diplomatic event of 1909-1910, 
66; economic situation in, 153; 
foreign interests in, 201, 241; 
Japan in, 5, 6, 14, 22, 188, 206, 
208, 220, 226, 229, 231, 232, 237, 
272, 274, 276, 281, 282, 289, 334, 
337; Manchurian allies in, 233, 
234, 236, 340; mutual under- 
standings in, 351 ; political future 
of, 60, 233; tragedy of, 166-167; 
present and future conditions in, 
353; Prussianized, 342; puni- 
tive expeditions in, 11, 20 ; scourg- 
ing of, 13; steamships to, 251- 
253, 259-269; readjustment of 
relations in, 237 

Eastern Manchuria, See Manchuria 

Ecuador, The, 268 

Edward, King, 36; quoted, 26 

Egypt, 190, 278 

Elder Statesmen of Japan, 234-235, 
236 

Eldridge, Oliver, 252 

England, See Great Britain 

"Englishman's Home, An" (by 
Captain DuMaurier), 18, 63 

English Peninsula and Oriental 
Steamship Company, 255 



INDEX 



359 



Europe, 18, 54, 87, 97, 109, 127, 130, 
233, 237, 315, 318, 321, 330, 337, 
340, 345, 347, 349; Asian diplo- 
macy in, 145 ; attitude towards 
neutralization proposal, 180; fate 
discussed, 14 ; financiers, 59-85, 
115, 123, 120, 131, 138, 201 ; fu- 
ture, 340; money in China, 243, 
248, 249 ; position in East Asia, 
73, 272 ; remodeled, 7, 8, 20, 273, 
275 ; resilience of, 20 ; retaliation 
on Asia, 8-9, 10 ; states of, 20-21 ; 
war debts of, 337 

European-Asian alliance, 144, 334 

European Powers (France, Germany, 
Great Britain), 89; attempt to 
control China's credit, 02, 04, 60 ; 
competition in China, 125 ; finan- 
cial spheres, 125; handling of 
Hukuang loan, 00-88; in East 
Asia, 73, 272 ; loan policy of, 198 ; 
"spheres of influence", 59; Tien- 
tsin-Pukow loan, 59, 01, 70 

European War, 3, 9, 14, 54, 05, 79, 
124, 220, 228, 237, 250, 259, 272, 
281, 299, 317, 318, 319, 323, 339, 
340, 348, 351, 352; beginning of, 
19-20, 203, 235, 242 ; duration of, 
20, 210, 233; instigator of, 70; 
lessons of, 5 ; motives of, 349 ; 
munition troubles of, 328 ; prep- 
arations for, 0, 13, 15, 10-20, 208; 
press system of, 14, 19, 20 

Extraterritoriality, principle of, 190, 
215, 222, 223, 231, 274 ; qualities 
of, 221 

Fairfield Shipbuilding Company 

(Glasgow), 257 
Fa-ku-men, 93 
Fillmore, President, 202 
First National Bank (New York), 09 
Fisher, Fred (American Consul at 

Harbin), 51, 52, 54 
Fiske, Admiral, 5 
Flanders, 340 
Fletcher, Henry P. (Secretary at 

Peking), 07, 70, 74, 70, 84, 80, 118, 

175 ; quoted, 72, 83 



Forbes, P. S., 250 

Forbidden City, The, 85, 128 

Formosa, 239, 275 

Fortifications Bill, 350 

France, 02, G7, 70, 79, 82, 89, 91. 
109, 110, 111, 113, 210, 232, 308. 
315, 310; agreement with Great 
Britain, freed from, 120; ally of 
Russia, 173; agreement to Open 
Door doctrine, 223; 

Attitude in currency loan af- 
fair, 135, 139; on Article VI. 
100 ; on Hukuang loan affair, 00- 
88; on neutralization proposal, 
173, 182; 

Expectation of war, 10; in For- 
mosa, 275; in the Pacific, 277; 
last chance of, 10; legation at 
Peking, 75, 82; loan to China, 
59, 00, 01; plan of defense, 14- 
15 ; right-of-aid agreement, 05 ; 
"spheres of influence", 58, 120; 
trade in China, 245; troops dis- 
cussed, 13 

Franco-Russian alliance, 10, 189, 224 

Fremont, John Charles, 252 

Fuchou, coaling station at, 277 

Fujiwaras dynasty, 279 

Fujiyama, 252, 300, 300 

Fukien Province, 234 

Fukui (Managing Director Mitsu 
Products Company), quoted, 228- 
229 

Fushimi, Prince, 173 

Gallio, 292 

Garrison, Lindley M. (Secretary of 
War), 5 

Genghis Khan, 10 

Germany, 5, 8, 02, 00, 07, 70, 78, 79, 
82, 89, 109, 113, 173, 208, 244, 
278, 281, 283, 310, 315, 310, 318, 
319, 349, 351; agreement to 
Open Door doctrine, 223; army 
in China, 8, 9, 10, 11-12, 13,15; 
attitude on neutralization pro- 
posal, 181 ; challenge to England, 
02, 03, 04, 05 ; confidence of, 1G ; de- 
signs upon civilization, 17 ; diplom- 



360 



INDEX 



Germany — (continued) 

acy in Europe, 327; eliminated 
from China, 236; feeling against 
England, 14, 61 ; Hukuang loan 
affair, 66-88 ; legation at Peking, 
75, 182; Liege a Waterloo, 19; 
loans to China, 59, 60, 61, 62; 
military system, 16, 17, 18; re- 
allotment of territory, 16-17; 
right-of-aid agreement with China, 
65; "spheres of influence", 58, 
59, 64; spy scares, 18; war cor- 
respondents, 18 

Gerngros, General, 173 

Gibraltar, 350 

Golden Age, The, 252, 254 

Gonsuke Hayashi (Japanese Minis- 
ter in Peking), 173, 329 

Goodnow, Frank J., 302 

Goto, Baron (Minister of Com- 
munications, Japan), 114, 159, 
334 

Gould family, 264 

Grant, General, 238, 253 

Gray, Captain Alfred G., 252 

Gray, Captain Robert, 252 

Great Britain, 62, 70, 82, 89, 91, 98, 
102, 109, 110, 111, 113, 145, 146, 
189, 232, 239, 244, 350; agree- 
ment to Open Door doctrine, 223 ; 
ally of Japan, 24, 26, 49, 52, 81, 89, 
93, 103, 180, 183, 207, 239; anger 
at Japan, 234; 

Attitude in currency loan af- 
fair, 139, 190; on Hsin-min-tun 
Railway scheme, 93-94 ; on Hu- 
kuang loan affair, 66-88; on 
neutralization proposal, 180, 182, 
183,186; 

Foreign office, 84 ; " German War" 
scares in, 18, 63 ; importance in 
East Asia, 24 ; infidelity to Open 
Door pledge, 187 ; in Formosa, 
275 ; in the Pacific, 277 ; legation 
at Peking, 75, 82, 84, 93 ; loans to 
China, 59, 60, 61, 62; losses at 
Neuve Chapelle, 234; negotia- 
tions for Hankow-Szechuan line, 
65, 66; offers adviser to China, 



Great Britain — (continued) 

126; premier aid agreement, 62, 
75; press, 94, 115, 234; repudi- 
ates action of Pauling and Com- 
pany, 93, 117; "spheres of influ- 
ence", 58, 59, 62, 63, 120; trade 
in China, 245 ; troops, 10, 13 

Great Northern Railway Company, 
259, 260, 262 

Great Republic, The, 252, 261 

Great Wall of China, 9, 10, 11, 106, 
197, 209 

Grenada, The, 257 

Grey, Sir Edward, 66, 94, 174; 
quoted, 113 

Groton School (Massachusetts), 94 

Guam, 270 

"Gun-boat policy", 190 

Habarovsk, 151 

Hall, H. H. (American Consul at 
Sydney), 255, 256 

Hankow, China, 59, 68, 189 

Hankow-Canton loan, 59, 60, 61, 
62, 65-66, 70, 79 

Hankow-Canton Railway conces- 
sion, 60, 80, 198 

Hankow-Szechuan line, 60, 65, 66, 80 

Harbin, 110, 111, 119, 154, 158, 159, 
168, 169, 172, 312; Japanese 
Consul General at, quoted, 157; 
meeting of Japanese and Russians 
at, 165-167; policy, 184; Rus- 
sian administration of, 197, 240 

Harriman, Edward H., 49, 102, 103, 
115, 119, 120, 150, 160, 161, 163, 
165, 249, 263, 264, 265, 267, 317; 
aid to Japan, 45, 47; lease of 
Russian Railway, 39 ; mobbed in 
Tokio, 40-41 ; ordered home, 105 ; 
death of, 106, 162, 265 ; plan for 
world belt line, 44, 105, 264, 265 ; 
predicts war with Japan, 44, 47 

Harris, Townsend, 219, 347 ; quoted, 
277-278 

Hart, Henry, 255 

Hart, Robert, 293, 301 

Hasagawa (Japanese Governor Gen- 
eral of Korea), 334 



INDEX 



361 



Hawaii, 251, 258, 259, 262, 270, 275, 
276 

Hay, John, 23, 54, 58, 89, 103, 119, 
124, 175, 202, 223, 225, 230, 239, 
338; quoted, 148 

Hayashi, Count (late Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, Japan), 114, 282 

Hill, James J., 264 

Hill and Harriman railroads, 262 

Hillier, Mr. (London), 66, 84 

Hochi, The, quoted, 188 

Hokkaido, 246 

Hongkong, 194, 244, 245, 251, 252, 
253, 260, 261, 350 

Hongkong-Shanghai bank, 83, 84 

Honolulu, 3, 99, 257, 258, 259, 266 

Horvat, General (Administrator of 
Russian-Manchurian Railway), 
173 

Hsi Liang (Viceroy of Manchuria), 
106, 107, 108, 172 

Hsin-min-tun, 91, 103, 106 

Hsin-min-tun Railway, 329; con- 
troversy over, 92-94 ; extension 
to Fa-ku-men, 93, 94, 109 ; sale of, 
91-92 

Hsu Shih-chang (Viceroy of Man- 
churia), 92, 93, 107, 172 

Hughes, Charles E., quoted, 7 

Hukuang loan, 88, 89, 90, 106, 108, 
109, 115, 118, 120, 131, 137, 199; 
history of, 66-86 

Huntington, Collis P., 262, 264 

Ii, Prince, 166 

Ijuin, M. (Japanese Minister at 
Peking), 109 

Imperial Valley, 265 

India, 278, 280 

Indies, The, 321 

Inland Sea, 261, 280, 345 

Inouye, Count, 42, 43, 114, 246 

Ishikawa, 29 

Islands of Japan, 251 

Italy, agreement to Open Door doc- 
trine, 223; troops in Chihli, 10 

Ito, Prince (Chief Elder Statesman 
of Japan), 30, 39, 42, 43, 47, 49, 
114. 148, 150, 164, 165, 168, 169, 



Ito, Prince — (continued) 

173, 178, 179, 184, 218, 234, 235, 
241, 246, 285, 287, 312, 313, 318; 
attitude toward Korea, 46 ; assas- 
sination of, 111, 166-169, 184, 
207, 347 ; decision of, 45 ; fame of, 
41 ; friend of America, 46 ; great- 
est Oriental since Confucius, 109; 
made Imperial envoy, 110; 
quoted, 167 
Ito-Harriman agreement (lease of 
Manchurian railways), 40-41, 44- 
45, 46, 52, 91, 97, 103, 110, 112, 
114, 120, 150, 176, 179, 289; 
abandoned, 42, 43, 165, 176; 
declined by China, 48 
Iwakura Mission, 253 
Iwasaki family, 254, 255, 261 
Iyeyasu (first Tokugawa ruler in 

Japan), 280 
Izwolsky, M. (foremost diplomat of 
Russia), 109, 174, 184 

Japan, 21, 54, 58, 87, 88, 91, 98, 109, 
112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 125, 

127, 132, 228, 244, 253, 259, 286, 
295, 310, 319, 351; American 
treaty (Peary Treaty), 166, 205, 
344 ; annexation of Korea, 128, 
176, 208; attitude in currency 
loan affair, 135-137, 139, 187, 188- 
189, 190; edict of, 246-247; 
Emperor of, 39, 41, 236, 239, 246, 
279, 280, 281, 334; England an 
ally, 24, 26, 49, 52, 81, 89, 93, 
103, 180, 183, 207, 239; cause 
for expansion, 227, 231 ; contro- 
versy over Hsin-min-tun railway, 
92-94, 103, 106, 109; Diet, 231; 
diplomacy, 204-205, 206-207, 209, 
228, 229, 236, 240; erasure of 
treaties, 217-218, 220; European 
allies of, 145 ; expansion into 
Chihli, 231 ; expansion into Korea, 
231 ; expansion into Manchuria, 
41, 45, 50, 51, 56, 57, 59-60, 91, 

128, 151 ; Expansionists (Kultur- 
ists), 114, 228, 235, 236; first 
diplomatic victory, 186; first po- 



362 



INDEX 



Japan — (continued) 

litical mistake, 238; first treaty 
(Korea), 281 ; Foreign Office, 175, 
207; foreign policy, 42, 43, 176, 
177, 184, 220 ; Formosa, 46, 239 ; 
history of (Nitobe's), 278-281, 
282, 288, 316; in East Asia, 5, 
6, 14, 22, 188, 229, 272, 274, 
276, 281, 282, 289, 312, 314-315, 
337-353; in Pacific, 5, 88, 146, 
210, 237, 247, 248, 249, 261, 
275, 276, 277, 278, 314, 323, 
337, 344, 346, 347, 348, 349- 
353; Japan-China War, 101, 
205, 207 ; Japanese-Russian agree- 
ment, 326, 327; Japanese-Rus- 
sian new convention (1916), 321- 
322, 324, 329, 333, 348, 349; 
Japanese-Russian predatory pact 
(1910), 185, 192, 240, 272, 316, 
317, 321, 349 ; legation in Peking, 
104, 116, 303; literature, 301; 
loan to, 25-26, 27; "Magna 
Charta", 281; Manchurian rail- 
way, 49, 92, 94, 106, 110 ; Mikado, 
The, 257; Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs, 316 ; Monroe Doctrine of, 
231, 232; moral sense of, 346; 
nationalizes industries, 246 ; need 
of money, 24-25 ; Osaka- Yoko- 
hama line, 254 ; partners of, 321 ; 
plan of empire, 172, 173, 175, 179, 
182, 188, 191, 208; policies, 6, 21, 
346; political leader of Man- 
churian allies, 131, 182, 186; 
press, 114, 139, 158, 182, 188-189, 
227; professions of, 200, 283; 
profits from World War, 340-341 ; 
Prussianized, 18; race question 
on American coast (California), 
7-8, 49, 50, 53, 98, 311 ; railway 
sovereignty, 208; 

Relations with China : agree- 
ment with, 91-92, 207; control 
of, 232, 237, 348 ; expansion into, 
150, 176, 231, 243; demands 
upon, 204, 209-210, 218, 228, 232, 
235, 272, 283, 284, 301, 310, 311, 
314, 315, 329-330, 348 ; full text 



Japan — (continued) 

of demands, 211-215; group V 
of demands, 214-215, 218, 219, 
226, 227, 228, 232, 233, 234, 236 ; 
interference in, 64, 81, 188, 273, 
286-287, 288, 289, 301-306; offer 
to China's republican Govern- 
ment, 189; plan to arm Chinese, 
232; plan to divide China, 232; 
protest to, 164 ; right-of-aid agree- 
ment, 81 ; sale of railway to, 91- 
92; special rights in, 185, 313; 
trade in, 245-247 ; vetoes China's 
railway plans, 103 ; 

Relations with Manchuria: 
builds railways in, 208; expan- 
sion into, see under Japan, " ex- 
pansion " ; invasion of, 297 ; mili- 
tary mobilization in, 329; posi- 
tion in, 121 ; plans in regard to, 
42, 43, 44, 172, 175; special 
privileges in, 43, 89, 90, 104 ; 

Relations with Russia, 148- 
156, 160-162, 163-170, 176-179, 
184, 207; agreements with, 185, 
192, 208, 210, 240, 272, 316, 317, 
321-322, 324, 326, 327, 329, 333, 
348, 349 ; demands upon, 29-30, 
91; flanking of, 19; 

Relations with United 
States, 22; attitude towards 
steamship lines, 260-261, 264 
attitude towards Open Door doc 
trine, 223, 239, 240, 284, 286 
depredation upon, 336; expan 
sion across Pacific, 240, 343, 348 
opened by America, 237, 276, 279 
280 ; history of relations, 237-241 
hostility to, 40, 47, 53, 98, 147 
183, 237-241, 276, 277, 283, 291 
310-312, 315-317, 318, 320 
propaganda in, 53, 314; race ques 
tion on Pacific coast (California) 
7-8, 49, 50, 53, 98, 311 ; 
Restoration, 166; rulers of, 279- 
281; Sea of, 14, 20; securities 
of, 25 ; seizure of Kiaochou, 64 ; 
seizure of Loochoo Kingdom, 238; 
temper in Portsmouth Treaty, 42, 



INDEX 



363 



Japan — (continued) 

45, 49, 240 ; troops, 13, 14 ; War 

Government, 334 ; war upon 

Germany, 1 ; weakness in assets, 

42; Year Book, 320 
Japan, The, 252, 2G1, 265 
Japan-China War, 101, 205, 207, 

297 
Japanese-American Treaty, 344 
Japanese East and West News, 

quoted, 267 
Japanese Restoration, 106 
Japan Gazette, The, 267 
Japan to America, 228 
Jenks, Jeremiah W., 124, 129 
Jernigan, T. R. (ex-Consul General 

at Shanghai), quoted, 222 
Jordan, David Starr, 308 
Jordan, Sir John (British Minister), 

66, 125; quoted, 74, 83 
Jukuan, 12 

Kahn, Otto H., 168; quoted, 44-45 

Kalgan, 10 

Kamchatka, 147 

Kaneko, Baron, 26, 148, 276; at 

Portsmouth, 29, 30, 31-35, 37, 

246 
Kato, 235, 236 
Katsuma, Awa, 254 
Katsura, Marquis, 42, 43, 109, 114, 

145, 208, 246; quoted, 29 
Kearny, Commander (East India 

squadron), 222 
Kiaochou, 203, 205, 209, 315, 323, 

345 ; Bay of, 64 
Kinchou, 104, 297 
Kinchou-Aigun Railway scheme, 

104-105, 113, 117, 118, 119, 159, 

164, 170, 199, 289, 329; history 

of, 106-112, 113, 117 
Kittery Point, see Portsmouth 
Kiukazan, Sendai, 254 
Knox, Philander C. (Secretary of 

State), 55, 67, 68, 83, 115, 119, 

120, 143, 175, 181, 186, 189, 197, 

208, 215, 225, 326; quoted, 90, 

112, 114, 200 
Kobe, 254 



Kobe Chronicle, quoted, 267 

Kokovtseff, M. (Russian Minister of 
Finance), 105, 109, 110, 111, 153, 
164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 184 

Kokumin, The, quoted, 158 

Komahura, 279 

Komura, Baron, 52, 55, 78, 81, 87, 
91, 95, 107, 111, 114, 230, 234, 236, 
241, 312, 313, 340, 345, 347, 352 ; 
at Portsmouth, 28, 29, 30, 34, 35 ; 
first Asiatic to distrust America, 
47; genius of "Greater Japan", 
109, 145, 235, 285 ; policy of, 38, 
43, 49 ; scheme of expansion, 150, 
168, 169, 231, 233, 235, 236, 240, 
241 ; threatened by Japanese, 42 ; 
work of, 48-49, 103 

Korea, 19, 25, 42, 45, 46, 101, 146, 
206, 215, 235, 238, 239, 253, 278, 
280, 283, 310, 311, 313, 320, 329, 
351, 352; annexation by Japan, 
128, 176, 208, 218, 231, 235, 241, 
333 ; conspiracy case, 272 ; Jap- 
anese advance in, 159, 231, 239; 
military occupation of, 224 ; mur- 
der of Queen, 166; opened to 
world, 238; treaties with, 197, 
198, 225, 238, 281 

Korea, The, 266 

Korostovetz, M. (Russian Minister 
at Peking), 109, 157, 158, 169, 173 ; 
at Portsmouth, 28, 36; quoted, 
115, 162 

Kuhn, Loeb and Company, 98, 105, 
106, 198 

Kukuan Pass, 11 

Kuropatkin, General (Russian Min- 
ister of War), 149 

LaFollette-Furuseth Seaman's Act, 

2, 265, 267, 268 
Lake Baikal, 151 
Legations at Peking, 67, 75, 82, 84, 

93, 104, 116, 234, 303 
Lenox, N. Y., 33, 34, 35 
Leonari Apartment House (New 

York), 32, 35 
Leopold, King, 80 
Levant, The, 73 



INDEX 



Liang Tun-yen (Head of Chinese 

Foreign Office), 71, 75, 96, 118, 

172; quoted, 72, 99 
Liao River, 329 
Liaotung, 315, 323 
Libau, 44 
Liege, 19 

Li Hung-chang, 9, 167 
Ling, E. S., quoted, 304 
Little, Archibald, 300 
Liu Kuan-ts'ai, 11 
Lloyd George, David, quoted, 308 
Loeb, Secretary, 37 
London, 24, 39, 49, 79, 119, 141, 181, 

184, 325 
London Daily Chronicle, The, 326; 

quoted, 349 
London Daily News, The, 234 
London Morning Post, The, 234 ; 

quoted, 326 
London Morning Telegraph, The, 

29, 234 
London Times, The, 29, 204, 234; 

quoted, 327 
Longworth, Mrs. Nicholas, 40 
Loochoo Kingdom, 238 
Los Angeles, 7 

Lotus Club, New York, 31, 33, 35 
Loubet, President, 16 
Lovett, R. S., 264 
Lusitania, The, 226, 310 

Macao, 295 

MacCartee, Doctor, 238 

Magdalena Bay, 230, 274 

Mahan, Admiral, 14 

Mainichi, The, 189 

Manchester Guardian, The, 234 

Manchu, ancestral palaces, 97; 
kingdom 224; monarchy, 191, 
292, 302, 307; throne, 71, 78, 93 
107, 126, 216 

Manchuria, 14, 16, 20, 46, 47, 57, 
208, 266, 326, 329; American 
position in, 120; America's phys- 
ical rights in, 103 ; application of 
currency loan to, 136, 139, 141, 
143 ; America's neutralization 
plan, 103-121, 128, 130-131, 143, 



Manchuria — (continued) 

164, 170, 174-184; arbitrament 
of, 18 ; base of conquest, 89, 177 ; 
battlefields of, 13, 208; contro- 
versy over Hsin-min-tun Rail- 
way, 91-94, 103, 106, 109 ; China's 
railways in, 91, 92, 94, 103 ; divi- 
sion of sovereignty in, 158, 177, 
209, 225 ; government remodeled, 
92; Japan's attitude towards, 41, 
42,;43, 44, 45, 56; Japanese and 
Russian pressure in, 108, 178, 197, 
231, 297 ; Japanese military mobi- 
lization in, 329, 333 ; Japan's posi- 
tion in, 121 ; Japan's railways in, 
92, 94, 106, 110, 208; Kinchou- 
Aigun Railway scheme, 104-105, 
106-112, 113, 117, 118, 119; 
lease of railways, 40 (see also 
South Manchurian Railway) ; les- 
sons of, 17, 18, 19; meeting of 
Ito and Kokovtseff, 164-167 ; po- 
litical situation in, 90 ; " spheres of 
influence" in, 104, 164; special 
privileges in, 48, 56, 59, 89, 90, 
159, 160, 161, 179, 209 ; situation 
between Japan and Russia in, 
148-149, 161-162 ; Russia's posi- 
tion in, 56, 121; trade marts 
opened, 243; treaties of, 198; 
Tsitsihar-Aigun Railway agree- 
ment, 104, 106 ; visitors to, 172- 
173 

Manchurian allies (Japan, Russia, 
Great Britain, France), 54, 57, 97, 
120, 131, 138, 142, 143, 227, 228, 
248, 273, 321, 325, 326, 333, 339, 
340, 341, 349 ; agreement between, 
89, 137, 178, 183, 185, 240; 

Attitude Towards China's 
revolution, 188 ; neutralization 
proposal, 181-182; Open Door 
principle in East Asia, 230 ; Tong's 
mission, 97 ; 

In East Asia, 233-234, 236, 340; 
leader of, 131, 182; opposition to 
America, 89, 109-118; reverses 
to, 233, 234; standing of, 121; 
supremacy in Europe, 227 



INDEX 



365 



Manchurian bank scheme, 52, 97, 
98, 104 

Manchurian Period (1894-1900), 
22, 23 

"Manchurian Question", 88, 90, 
104, 175, 180 

Manila, 259 

Manila Bay, 64, 85, 278, 350 

Mariposa, The, 258, 259 

Marmora, Sea of, 134 

Martin, Doctor W. A. P., quoted, 
292 

Marvin, George, 94 

Ma Tuan-lin, 141 

Mayflower, The, 28 

McCullagh, Francis (of Manchuria), 
29 

McGregor, The, 257 

McKinley, President, 2, 175, 202 

Meredith, George, quoted, 37 

Mesopotamia, 13, 340 

Metropolitan Period (1853-1882), 22 

Metzger, Herr (German Consul in 
Manchuria), 95 

Mexico, 352; revolution in, 4 

Mikado, The, 257 

Miller, Henry B. (Consul General at 
Yokohama), 247 

Minnesota, The, 259, 266 

Mitsu-Bishi Company, 254, 255 

Moada, The, 254 

Moltke, Count von, 145 

Mongol, The, 257 

Mongolia, 94, 102, 106, 208, 266, 
329; alienization of Outer Mon- 
golia, 197-198, 203, 208 ; Japanese 
expansion into, 231 ; Japanese 
special rights in, 330 

Mongols, 3, 9 

Monroe Doctrine, 221, 231, 312, 313, 
342; for East Asia, 231, 232; 
Japan's substitute for, 231, 232 

Montenegro, 343 

Moore, John Bassett, 4 

Morgan, J. Pierpont, 67, 198 

Morrison, George Ernest, 29 

Moses Taylor, The, 255 

Motono, Baron (Japanese Ambassa- 
dor to Russia), 152, 184, 333 



Mukden, 91, 96, 107; American 
Consul General at, 52, 93, 104; 
Chinese government at, 104-105, 
330; terminus of Chinese railway, 
92 ; viceroys at, 172, 173 

Mukden- Antung Railway, 56 

"Mukden Cabinet", 94, 96, 97, 105, 
115 

Mutsuhito, Emperor of Japan, 280 

Nagasaki, 254 

Nanking, 189, 295 

Napoleon, 145 

National City Bank (New York), 69 

Na Tung (Chief Minister Foreign 

Affairs for China), 140, 172, 187; 

quoted, 106 
Neaudeau, Ludovic (Redacteur du 

Journal, Paris), 14 
Nebraska, The, 255, 256 
Nekrasoff, Professor, 153 
Neutralization schemes: first, 150; 

second, 153; third, 160; fourth, 

162; fifth, see American neu- 
tralization proposal 
Neuve Chapelle, 226, 234, 235, 236 
Nevada, 251 

Nevada, The, 254, 255, 256 
Newell, Captain, 254 
New Mexico, 251 
New York, The, 254 
New York Central Railway, 44 
New York City, 25, 29, 31, 33, 37, 

49, 106, 204, 251, 287 
New York, London and China 

Steamship Company, 257 
New York Times, The, 324 
New Zealand, 256, 257 
Niang-tse-kuan, 12 
Nicolaevsk, 147 
Nitobe, Inazo, history of Japan by, 

278-281,316; quoted, 282, 288 
Nobel Peace Prize to President 

Roosevelt, 30 ; price of, 38 
Noetzlin, Mr. (head of International 

Wagons-Lits), 105, 106, 119, 

165 
Nonni River, 52 
North China, included under China 



366 



INDEX 



North German Lloyd Company, 257 
North Manchuria, included under 

Manchuria 
North Manchurian Railway, 42 
North Pacific Railway, 259, 266 
North Sea, 340 
Novoe Vremya, The, 161 

O'Brien, Mr. (Ambassador to Japan), 
230 

Oceanic Steamship Company of 
America, 258, 266, 334 

Okuma (Japanese Premier), 206, 
216, 217, 236, 244, 254, 287, 299, 
300, 318, 330, 332, 333, 334, 336, 
338, 341; quoted, 217, 218, 228, 
324, 326, 329, 331 

O'Laughlin, Callan, 99 

Olongapo, 350 

Omnibus protocol, 223 

Omsk, 153 

Open Door Decade (1900 ), 22, 

23, 26, 243, 249; Boxer Uprising, 
22; China's struggle against 
aggression, 23; Russian-Japanese 
War, 22, 23 

Open Door doctrine, 1, 23, 51, 54, 
56, 58, 59, 64, 73, 77, 82, 89, 97, 
103, 113, 120, 123, 130, 134, 143, 
146, 154, 161, 163, 170, 179, 180, 
183, 195, 199, 243, 247, 249, 274, 
276, 282, 283, 285, 310, 315, 319, 
321 ; American adherence to, 50, 
101, 102, 112, 178, 235, 239, 241 ; 
conventions, 130 ; developed 
under Hay, 23, 58, 230, 239; 
death blow to, 192, 284 ; destroyed 
by Japan, 351; failure of, 118; 
formally established, 222, 223; 
in China, 57, 86, 89, 208, 210, 224, 
229, 232, 241, 321 ; in Manchuria, 
341 ; Japan's substitute for, 232, 
233, 239; older than Monroe 
Doctrine, 221 ; opposition to, 113, 
178, 185; revised, 190, 193-194, 
210 ; Russia's violation of, 52, 54 ; 
threatened, 88, 90, 102, 186, 208, 
218, 229, 230 ; treaties in support 
of. 223-224, 230 



Open Door powers, 149, 159, 170, 
184, 239 

Oregon, The, 254 

Oregon Territory, 251, 259, 260, 262 

Osaka- Yokohama line, 254 

Oshima, General (Governor of 
Kuangtung), 173; becomes Min- 
ister of War, 334 

Oyster Bay, 29, 31 

Pacific, The, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 14, 20, 57, 
98, 103, 168, 197, 203, 244, 249, 
251, 266, 312, 315, 317, 320, 328, 
339 ; America in, 2, 6, 21, 22, 23, 
27, 28, 53, 54, 60, 144, 145, 146, 
148, 166, 169, 179, 220, 226, 243, 
249, 250, 274, 275, 276, 285, 309, 
318, 319, 322, 334, 337-344, 346, 
348; balance of power in, 145, 
146, 237; commercial battle in, 
199 ; Europe in, 65, 73, 145, 237, 
347; Europe-Japan alliance in, 
318, 321, 334, 349 ; first steamer, 
line across, 251, 252, 253, 262, 266; 
France in, 16; Japan in, 5, 88, 
146, 210, 237, 247, 248, 249, 261, 
275, 276, 277, 278, 314, 323, 337, 
344, 346, 347, 348, 349-353; 
naval bases in, 270, 275, 276, 277, 
278; Open Door policy in, 50, 
87, 309, 310 ; present and future 
conditions in, 325, 336-353 ; prob- 
lems in, 22, 73, 113, 120, 166, 279, 
313, 343, 352 ; Prussian principles 
in, 321 ; steamship lines in, 250- 
269 ; strategic importance of, 350 ; 
struggle in, 21, 145, 273, 352; 
world issue, 6 

Pacific Mail Steamship Line, 2, 44 ; 
Pacific liners sold, 3 ; history of, 
251-269 

Pago Pago, 258, 278 

Panama, Isthmus of, 251 

Panama Canal, 3 ; building of, 249 ; 
opening inaugurated, 54, 144 

Paoting-Fu, 10 

Paris, 12, 14, 18, 79, 105, 106, 119, 
131, 134, 181, 325 : dash on, 11, 
17.19 



INDEX 



367 



Pauling and Company (England), 
93, 104, 106, 107, 115, 117 

Pearl Harbor, 278, 350 

Peking, 9, 10, 12, 28, 72, 73, 79, 82, 
95, 90, 97, 99, 105, 107, 108, 121, 
134, 136, 138, 144, 158, 165, 173, 
182, 204, 208, 209, 216, 220, 242, 
292, 295, 304, 305, 311, 315; 
Board of Revenue, 124, 127; con- 
troversy over Hukuang loan at, 
83-84 ; American envoy at, 273 ; 
diplomatic importance of, 62-63, 
118; diplomatic post at, 2; 
Grand Council at, 85, 99; lega- 
tions at, 67, 75, 82, 84, 93, 104, 
116, 234, 303; military conclave 
in, 11, 13 

Peking-Turkestan road, 11 

Perry, Commodore, 275, 279, 280, 
285 

Persia, 135, 295 

Petrograd, see St. Petersburg 

Petuna, 323, 329 

Phelps, S. Ledyard, 252 

Philadelphia, Centennial at, 253 

Philippine question, 2 

Philippines, The, 3, 5, 55, 249, 270, 
275, 276, 291, 316 

Phillips, William, 68 

Phinney, James H., 252 

Pichon, Stephen (French Minister 
in Peking), 11, 12, 66; quoted, 
14-15 

Pi-tzu-wo, 297 

Pius IX, Pope, 36; quoted, 37 

Pokotiloff, M. (Russian Minister at 
Peking), 28, 155 

Port Arthur, 350; birth of, 28; 
dedication of Japanese monument 
at, 173 ; funeral of, 29 ; lessons of, 
19 

Portsmouth, N. H. (Kittery Point), 
37, 39, 45, 47, 48, 101, 150, 151, 
155, 234, 235, 340, 345, 347; 
meeting of nations at, 28, 144 ; 
secret negotiations at, 43 

Portsmouth Treaty, 1, 6, 16, 39, 40, 
48, 57, 91, 107, 119, 149, 154, 175, 
207, 224, 227, 230, 241, 337; 



Portsmouth Treaty — (continued) 
attendants at conference, 28, 29; 
Article VI, see Article VI; con- 
clusion of, 36; condemned in 
Japan, 40-41 ; deadlock over, 30- 
31 ; discussion of terms, 29, 32-33, 

36, 175, 176; history of, 28-38; 
Japan's change of position, 35; 
peace council, 31-35, 144 ; result, 
38 ; secret minutes of, 43, 49 , 176 

Portugal, 352 

Predatory pact (Russia and Japan), 
185, 192, 240, 272, 316, 317, 321, 
323, 349 

Pri-amur Province, 173 

Primorskaya Province, 162 

Prussian war machine, see German 
army 

Puget Sound-Siberian steamer ser- 
vice, 147 

Quallah Battoo, 285 

Rangatura, The, 255 
Revelstoke, Lord, quoted, 25-26 
Reventlow, Count, 17 
Revolutionary War (America), 197 
Right-of-aid agreements, 61, 62, 65, 

67, 68, 69, 71, 75 
Roberts, Edmund (first envoy to 

East Asia), 210 
Roberts, Lord, 37 
Rockhill, Mr. (Minister at Peking), 2, 

53, 67, 96, 119, 130, 157, 170, 175 
Roosevelt, President, 2, 29, 38, 40, 

43, 50, 95, 124, 175; awarded 
Nobel prize, 30; connection with 
Portsmouth Treaty, 30-35, 36, 47, 
148 ; efforts in Japanese question, 
174, 205 ; inaugurated opening 
Panama Canal, 54; sent battle- 
ship fleet into Pacific, 53-54, 174 ; 
two great deeds of, 145 ; quoted, 

37, 276, 284 

Root, Elihu (Secretary of State), 6, 

54, 175, 184, 195, 197, 230, 338 
Root-Takahira agreement, 103, 116, 

211, 224, 322; arranged, 98; 
criticized, 101-102; signed, 99, 100 



368 



INDEX 



Rose, The, 254 

Rosen, Baron (former Minister to 
Japan), 28, 30, 32, 33, 35 

Russell and Company, 252 

Russia, 24, 55, 57, 58, 91, 109, 110, 
111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 
120, 125, 126, 132, 207, 228, 318, 
337, 348, 350, 351; administra- 
tion of Harbin, 197; aggressions, 
60 ; alienation of Outer Mongolia, 
197-198, 203, 208; army council 
(St. Petersburg), 152; Article 
VI (Russian-Chinese contract), 

48, 154-155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 

162, 163, 169, 176, 177, 178, 185, 
220 ; Asian diplomacy, 145 ; atti- 
tude in neutralization proposal, 
175, 181-182, 184; attitude on 
currency loan, 135-137, 139, 140, 
190; balance in East Asia, 323; 
basis of position, 54; Chinese 
Eastern Railway, 45, 111, 119; 
Consul General at Amur, quoted, 
157; Czar of, 173; demand in 
Hukuang loan affair, 80 ; demand 
on China, 169 ; Duma, the, 152 ; 
Foreign Office, 28 ; in World War, 
328; legation at Peking, 104; 
Manchurian railway, 42, 152, 153, 
154, 156, 162, 165, 169, 170, 
179, 329, 333; military power, 
146; ministries, 151, 158, 161, 162, 

163, 170, 178; peril from, 25; 
position in Manchuria, 121, 228, 
243; press, 115, 153, 161, 182; 
problems of, 151, 154, 157-158; 
protest to China, 164; relations 
with America, 27, 147-148, 157- 
159; relations with Japan, 24, 

49, 57, 78, 115, 147-148, 148-156, 
157, 158-170, 175-179, 184, 210, 
230, 313, 315, 316-317, 322-323, 
328; secret undertakings with 
China, 43, 154, 176; seizes mur- 
derer of Ito, 167 ; Siberian border, 
151, 153, 178; special rights in 
Manchuria, 89, 90, 104, 185; 
sphere in Manchuria, 110; sub- 
sidized ships, 245; transfer of 



Russia — 

Alaska, 27, 32, 147; troops dis- 
cussed, 13, 14, 17; violation of 
Open Door doctrine, 52, 56, 230; 
war debts of, 337 

Russian-Chinese Eastern Railway, 
44, 119, 151, 152, 158, 162, 177; 
loss on, 45 

Russian- Japanese alliances, 223 ; 
Predatory pact, see Predatory 
pact 

Russian-Japanese protest to China, 
164 

Russian-Japanese War, 22, 59, 121, 
148, 158, 205, 207, 208, 233, 240, 
243, 245, 285, 294, 295, 301, 317, 
339, 350; lessons of, 13, 17-18; 
peace problems of, 29 

Russian railway in South Man- 
churia, see South Manchurian 
Railway 

Russo-Chinese Bank, 158, 177 

Sagamore Hill, 33, 35 

Saghalin, discussed at Portsmouth, 

29, 32, 33, 176 
Saigo Yorimichi, General (Japanese 

Minister of War), 238, 253 
San Diego Exposition, 3 
San Francisco, 251, 252, 253, 256, 

257, 258, 259, 287 
San Francisco Bay, 266 
San Francisco-Sydney line, 255 
Satoh, at Portsmouth, 29, 36, 38 
Satsuma Rebellion, 255 
Saturday Evening Post, The, 37 
Savory, Nathaniel, 275 
Sazonoff, Sergius (Minister Foreign 

Affairs), 330; quoted, 323, 329, 

348-349 
Scidmore, G. H., 267 
Schiff, Jacob, 43, 49, 67, 69, 103, 

120, 249 ; financial alliance with 

Kuhn-Loeb-Rockefeller, and J. P. 

Morgan and Company, 198 ; loan 

to Japan, 24-26, 40, 47, 205; 

offer to finance "Manchurian 

Bank", 98; quoted, 198 
Schwartzhoff, General, 10 



INDEX 



369 



Schwerin, Lieutenant R. P., 262 

Seamen's Act, 2, 265, 267, 268 

Seoul, 134, 238, 295 

Serbia, 318, 340, 343 

Seward, William H., 143, 195, 225, 

253; quoted, 195, 202 
Shamrock, The, 254 
Shanghai, 222, 245, 249, 252, 255, 

275, 277 
Shanghai Period (1844 ), 22, 

259 
Shansi, 9, 11, 12 
Shantung, 9, 61, 149, 203, 323 
Sheng Hsuan-hwai (Vice President 

Board of Communications), 130, 

140, 187 
Sherley, S. (Congressman), quoted, 

350 
Shibusawa, Baron Yei-ichi, 284, 285, 

286, 287, 289, 318, 325, 333; 

quoted, 287-288 
Shimonoseki, 350 ; treaty of, 295 
Shipoff, Ivan, 153 
Ship Subsidy Bill, 256 
Shufeldt, Commander, 238 
Shuster, Morgan, 135 
Siam, 196, 253, 276 
Siberia, 148, 174, 175, 228 
Siberia, The, 266 
Siege of the legations, 9, 67 
Sierra, The, 258, 259 
Six-Power Loan, 191, 195, 197, 199, 

215, 221, 272, 341 
Smalley, George W. (London Times), 

29 
Sone, Baron (Japanese Minister of 

Finance), 39, 41, 43 
Sonoma, The, 258, 259 
South Chihli, see Chihli 
Southern Manchuria, see Manchuria 
South Manchurian Railway, 40, 42, 

44, 94, 114, 177, 241, 246, 322, 328, 

329; lease to Harriman, 39, 105 
Soyeda, 43 
Spain, 315 

Special rights powers, 240 
Special rights system, 190, 232, 322 
Spice Islands, 275 
Spreckles, J. D., 258 



Stone, Melville E. (Associated Press), 

47; connection with Portsmouth 

Treaty, 31-35, 37, 38 
St. Petersburg, 28, 30, 31, 35, 36, 44, 

79, 119, 152, 161, 164, 169, 171, 

173, 181, 182, 208, 322, 325, 330; 

Minister of Foreign Affairs at, 

quoted, 170 
Straight, Willard (American Consul 

General at Mukden), 94, 105, 135 ; 

China's agreement with, 52; 

Tong Shao-yi's arrangement with, 

93 
Straits of Magellan, 53 
Subotitch, General (Governor of 

Port Arthur), 149 
Sumatra, oil markets of, 244 
Sungari River, 160, 178, 322, 323, 

328, 329 
Sun Yat-sen (first President of 

China), quoted, 306 
Sydney, Australia, 256, 257, 258, 

259 

Taft, President, 54, 67, 103, 120, 
140, 142, 143, 145, 186, 225; 
cablegram to Prince Chun, 84, 85, 
86, 88 ; course in East Asia, 55, 56, 
175 ; snubbed at Canton, 40 ; 
quoted, 50-51, 87, 199-200; visit 
to East Asia, 175 

Tahiti, 258, 259 

T'ai-ping Rebellion, 307 

Tairas dynasty, 279 

Takahashi, 43 

Takahira, 29, 34, 35, 37 

Tanaka, Mr. (Director Japanese 
Manchurian Railway), 159 

Tao Kuang (Emperor of China), 253 

Tartar, The, 257 

Terauchi, General (Japanese Minis- 
ter of War), 173 ; made Minister 
of Foreign Affairs, 333-334 

Terranova (sailor), 221 

Thompson, Howard, 29, 34 

Tientsin, 93, 125, 276, 295 

Tientsin-Pukow Railway, contract 
for, 59; loan, 59, 61, 70 

Togo, Admiral, 287 



370 



INDEX 



Tokio, 29, 30, 39, 43, 47, 48, 52, 79, 
119, 144, 150, 154, 191, 203, 234, 
277, 303, 313, 334, 340, 353 ; Amer- 
ican embassy at, 317 ; diplomatic 
post at, 2 ; Foreign Office at, 321 

Tong Shao-yi (Governor at Mukden), 
95, 96, 98, 101, 108, 118, 126, 172; 
arrival in San Francisco, 98; 
arrangement with Mr. Straight, 
93; attempted purchase of rail- 
way, 92-93; Manchurian bank 
scheme, 52, 97 ; mission to Wash- 
ington, 97, 98, 99, 124, 159 ; plan 
to enlist American aid, 94, 96, 
124; "political rocket", 96; re- 
called to China, 102; resigned as 
Governor, 97 

Tosa, Daimyo of, 254 

Treaty period, 146 

Troops in Chihli, Austrian, 10; 
British, 10 ; Italian, 10 ; merit of 
international, 13-15 

Tsai Tseh, Duke (Minister of Fi- 
nance), 126, 128, 129, 140 

Tsingtao, "German sphere" at, 64 

Tsitsihar, 104 

Tsitsihar-Aigun Railway agreement, 
104, 106 

Tumen River, 56 

Turkey, 13, 190, 293, 295, 296, 318 

Tutuila, 258, 259 

Union Pacific Railway, 44 

Union Steamship Company of New 
Zealand, 258 

United States, alliance of govern- 
ment and financiers, 198 ; alliance 
with France and England, 15 ; 
Asiatic immigration issue, 343; 
Burlingame Treaty, 222; battle- 
ship fleet, 53-54, 144, 174 ; cabi- 
net dissolved, 4 ; controversy over 
Hukuang loan, 66-86; conflict 
with Manchurian allies, 89, 109- 
118; consuls in Manchuria, 52- 
53; "Dollar Diplomacy", 141, 
143, 326; escape from World 
War, 13; factors of expansion, 
23; first war scare, 53; foreign 



United States — {continued) 

affairs, 2, 5, 64, 186, 187 ; govern- 
ment, 3-8, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 
56, 69, 98-102, 141, 143, 156, 157, 
184, 187, 197, 201, 220, 225, 226, 
228, 250, 336; "Gun-boat policy", 
190; Hankow-Canton loan, 61, 
65, 66-70, 79; Hankow-Canton 
railway concession, 60, 80, 198; 
Indian squadron, 201, 222; in 
East Asia, see under East Asia; 
in Pacific, see under Pacific ; lega- 
tion at Peking, 67; loan policy, 
198-199 ; Manchurian question 
raised, 88, 90, 154, 157-159, 161- 
162; merchant marine, 249-269; 
most important act of diplomacy, 
54; national policy, 8; neutral- 
ization proposal, 103, 112-121, 
128, 130, 131, 143, 164, 170, 
174-175, 179, 180-184, 186, 200, 
207, 240, 241; oldest foreign 
rights, 220; only hope for, 341, 
344; Open Door treaties, 221, 
223-224 ; opposition to Europe's 
diplomacy, 145; overseas fail- 
ures, 249-250; Pacific coast, 2, 
6, 64, 237; Pacific war issue, 
343; Panama Canal, 144; plan 
to finance Manchurian bank, 104 ; 
press, 115, 116, 204, 217, 218; 
present situation in East Asia and 
Pacific, 336-353; physical inter- 
ests in Manchuria, 103, 104, 117, 
120; 

Relations with China, 270, 
273, 274, 275, 276; Boxer indem- 
nity, 95-96, 223, 310-311, 333; 
capital in, 104, 325, 336; coop- 
eration in Chinese loans, 68, 69, 
331, 332; currency loan, 130-143, 
147, 187-189, 199; diplomatic 
battle, 145-172, 179-185, 199; 
finance, 198, 242-249 ; interest in 
China's development, 98, 128, 
194-195 ; insult to, 99-100, 101 ; 
interference in, 196, 221-225; 
millions in, 196, 311 ; note to, 68, 
70 ; physical footing in, 145, 163, 



INDEX 



371 



United States — (continued) 

275, 326, 342 ; railway concessions, 
60, 80, IDS; right-of-aid agree- 
ment, 61, G7, G8, GO, 71; rights 
in, 108, 100; share in commerce, 
58, GO, 62, 6 L, 65, G7, G8, 8G ; trade 
with, 242-240 ; Treaty (American- 
Chinese), 122, 222, 223, 237; 

Relations with Japan: arbi- 
tration treaty, 53; attitude on 
Japan's demands, 218-210; con- 
flict with, 1, 04, 05, 183, 238-241, 
201; dominated by Japan, 210; 
financial adviser, 130, 132-138, 
140, 142; future relations, 344; 
help to Japan, 205; history of 
relations, 237-241 ; imitation of, 
51; loan 25-26, 27, 142; race 
question (California), 7-8, 40, 50, 
53, 08, 311; opening of Japan, 
237, 276, 270, 280; physical in- 
terests, 326 ; trade, 242 ; violation 
of treaty, 50, 51 ; war with, 342, 
343, 345, 347, 350, 352, 353; 
Relations with Russia, 27, 52, 
147-148, 157-150; responsibility 
for Ito's death, 168; rights out- 
raged, 4; Root-Takahira agree- 
ment, 08-103, 116, 120, 211, 224; 
Seaman's Act, 2, 2G5, 267, 268; 
slated to pay war debts, 337 ; 

State Department, 81, 06, 
08, 00, 101, 102, 111, 122, 130, 
225, 317, 331, 332, 338, 347; 
quoted, 72-73, 86, 100; 
Treaties with Korea, 107, 108, 
225 ; war zone agreement, 224 ; 
wealth, 328, 320 

University of California, 120 

Ussuri Province, 101 

Utah, 251 



Von Emmich, Otto, General, 10 

Von Ketteler, General, at Kukuan 
Pass, 11, 12; death of, 67 

Von Waldersee, Count, 

Von YYallmenich, Lieutenant-Colo- 
nel, 12 

Wall Street, New York City, 3, 44, 
40, 111, 162, 266 

Ward, Frederick Townsend, 307 

Washington, D.C., 6, 28, 20, 33, 36, 
37, 50, 53, 78, 70, 118, 120, 157, 
180, 183, 107, 242, 341, 348 

Washington, George, 107 

Washington Post, The, 204 

Washington Territory, 250, 260, 262 

Webb and Holladay, 255 

W T est Chihli, see Chihli 

Westminster Gazette, quoted, 322 

White, Henry, 110 

William, Emperor, 8, 0, 64, 85; 
cablegram to, 33 ; connection with 
Portsmouth Treaty, 32, 33, 34, 
35,36 

Willis, Mr. (British Consul at Muk- 
den), 05 

Wilson, Huntington, 68 

Wilson, President, 103, 105, 107, 
210, 221, 223, 225, 226, 240, 265, 
267, 273, 310, 311, 331, 332, 336, 
338, 341; quoted, 02, 103; 
reversal of government's policy, 
103-104 

"Winter Palace" of Dowager Em- 
press, 0; destroyed by fire, 10 

Witte, Count, at Portsmouth, 28, 30, 
32; quoted, 31, 36 

Wong a Wong a, The, 255 

World War, see European War 

Xavier, St. Francis, 203 



Vancouver, 2, 266 

Van Diemen's Straits, 253 

J'asco da Gama, The, 257 

Ventura, The, 258, 250 

Verdun, 340 

Vienna, 105 

Vladivostok, 151, 350 



Yangtse River, 180 

Yangtse Valley, 62, 63, 120, 127, 

243, 300, 311 
Yalu River, 246 
Yellow River, 128 
Yellow Sea, 25 
Yesso,281 



372 



INDEX 



Yokohama, 39, 205, 252, 254, 262 

Yokohama Bay, 134 

Yomiuri, The, 188 

Yorck, Count, 10 

Yorimoto, Emperor of Japan, 279 

Yoshohito, Emperor of Japan, 281 

Ypres, 226, 234, 235, 236 



Yuan Shih-k'ai (President of China), 
92, 95, 96, 99, 124, 172, 216, 217, 
302, 303-304, 305 ; becomes Em- 
peror, 303; died, 9; discredited, 
102 

Zealandia, The, 257 



